Almost Human
by Rainbowscape
Summary: When the Andromeda finds a young AI, Rommie questions the limitations of her own existence. Will past mistakes repeat themselves? SEASON 2 story.
1. Part One

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based upon the television show Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda owned by Tribune Entertainment. It is not affiliated with any of the above. It is created for free entertainment only and no copyright infringement is intended. 

**SPOILERS:** Sum of Its Parts, Star-crossed, The Mathematics of Tears, and All Too Human.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I didn't like the end of the movie A.I., so I thought I'd add Andromeda to it and give a better ending to such a sad story. It's a crossover story, but mostly it's a Rommie story and, if you're a Rommie fan, worth the read even if you never saw the movie A.I.

**Almost Human**

_by Leah_

April 2002

PROLOGUE

She never used it. It was the most pointless place in her quarters. She made certain to keep the area spotless, even changed the coverlets once a month, but that was all. It was the other crew members who caught some shut eye, some Z's, forty winks, floated off to Dreamland, or whatever they chose to call it. Yet, even with her powerful planet-sized brain, she could not have one little dream. 

She did not sleep. True, at times her avatar form had to conserve energy. When abroad, Rommie routinely carried an energy pack. When on board, however, it was like being inside a giant battery. To recharge was as simple as a thought. 

That made the bed was the most nonessential item of her quarters. 

"Why do you keep it?" the AI had once asked her. 

"Aesthetic value," Rommie replied. 

"Because it reminds them," said Holo-Rommie. "It reminds them of the difference." 

If her crew didn't see a bed in her quarters, they would remember. Remember that she didn't sleep...not the way they did. It would remind the crew, that as much as she looked like it, she wasn't human. It reminded her, too, that she was different. 

Her on screen counterpart didn't see the point. "You shouldn't worry about what the crew thinks in this instance. It doesn't matter." 

But it did matter to Rommie. It mattered to her a lot.

* * *

  


**1**

"Can you fix it?" asked Holo-Rommie, watching as Harper examined what lay on the table before him. It was the still form and shape of a human boy, the only inhabitant found in the derelict ship the _Andromeda Ascendant's_ long range scanners had detected only an hour earlier. But as the boy was taken onto the ship, _Andromeda's_ on screen AI noted and informed the crew that the destination for the boy should be in the Machine Shop instead of the Medical Deck. The boy was an artificial life form, like _Andromeda's_ own avatar, Rommie. "Can you fix whatever's wrong?" she repeated as Harper seemed enthralled and delayed to answer. 

At last, Harper lifted up his goggles and said, "Wow! Is this young fella a blast from the past! Wouldn't be surprised if he was one of the first AI's ever created. But his primitive circuitry seems to still be intact. He was well made. Can't figure out why he's not awake though. I've been searching and scanning but there doesn't seem to be any reset button of any kind." 

"Maybe he was designed without one," Holo-Rommie suggested. 

A brunette android entered the Machine shop. Her brown eyes looked piercingly at Harper. "You can fix him, can't you?" As much as Rommie proudly proclaimed herself a warship of the High Guard, there were still things that were beyond her reach. She could only make repairs she had been programmed to do. She needed and relied upon her human mechanic when there were things that needed fixing beyond the knowledge of her database. And this particular human, Seamus Harper, seemed to be able to improvise repairs that were almost miraculous. Rommie approached the spot where the boy lay with wonderment. "He's beautiful." She reached out and stirred his hair with her fingers. "He looks so human." 

Harper gave her a lopsided smile. "Like you, Rommie." He pulled back from his examination and studied the readouts of his handheld scanners. "Well, the good news is, he seems to be functioning fine. Whoever was on the ship certainly took good care of him. The bad news is that he's from a time before portal implants so I don't know how good I'd be at finding out why what makes him tick, isn't." 

Holo-Rommie looked at Rommie suddenly. "The captain's requested that you come to his office." 

Rommie nodded and remotely activated a com link. "I'm on my way, Dylan." She looked again at the still form and then at Harper. "Let me know if you make any progress," she said. She turned and left the Machine Shop. 

"Hmm," said Harper, engrossed in transferring his scans from various instruments all onto one data flexi. He was startled to hear Rommie's voice and looked up to see Holo-Rommie glaring at him. 

"Can you do it?" Holo-Rommie demanded. 

"I don't know," Harper said. "Quit grilling me, I'm doin' the best I can." 

"I'm sure you are," Holo-Rommie assured him. "But this it's..." 

"It's what?" Harper questioned, suddenly interested in the answer. He knew of all of _Andromeda's_ manifestations, the hologram was the one who seemed to be the most willing to verbalize what actually was going on inside Andromeda's brain. 

"It's important to her," said Holo-Rommie, then stood at attention, and flickered away, as if she already had said too much. 

Harper whistled, picked up a tool, and got back to work.

* * *

  


"You wanted to see me Dylan?" asked Rommie. She came into his office and stood at attention. 

"Yes," Dylan nodded. He was standing, looking at his token board which displayed the worlds that were part of the Commonwealth. "What's Harper's verdict on the boy?" 

"Still functioning, but in sleep mode. Harper may be able to repair him. We won't know more until he completes his examination." 

Dylan was silent. His blue eyes looked strained. He turned to face her and sighed. "Rommie, I know you're excited about this, but...maybe it would be best if we just let this sleeping droid lie." 

Rommie arched her eyebrows. "Why?" 

"HG. Gabriel. Pax Magellanic. Need I go on? Our experiences with other AI's have brought us nothing but grief. And they always seem to take their toll on you." 

A crease appeared in Rommie's brow and her brown eyes filled with a calculating expression. "HG seized control of my mind, Gabriel was the Balance of Judgment and tried to destroy me, and Pax attempted to kill us all. I can see why you would think that this would be a similar case." She looked directly at him and there was an intensity in her last few words. "But it's not. It's different." 

Rommie's seemingly detached recap reminded Dylan that she could remember those events with the brutal accuracy of her AI memory banks. Total recall. Perhaps, in some way, that ability wasn't entirely fair. Organics' memories, even of pain, faded with time. His ship didn't have that luxury. Her only compensation was the ability to isolate her emotions and examine those events with cold machine logic. Or so she claimed. 

Dylan studied her for a moment. "How is it different? I have to look out for the best interests of my crew and my ship. How do we know that whoever left him here like this, won't come back for him?" 

"We don't know anything yet," said Rommie. "Not until..." 

"I know," said Dylan, impatiently. "Not until Harper finishes." 

"You wouldn't want to just leave him on his ship, Dylan. Defenseless." She paused, carefully weighing her next word. "Alone." 

"No," Dylan replied, thinking this over. "I wouldn't. Okay. We'll wait here until Harper comes up with something and do what we can. But I'm not making any promises." 

After the avatar left, Beka peeked her head into the captain's office. "From the look on Rommie's face, I take it you vetoed the idea." 

Dylan looked up. "What idea?" 

"You know." Beka took a step inside. "Of keeping the kid." 

"He's not a kid. It's a machine. And no decision has been made yet." 

"How do you know what he is? You haven't taken the time to go and see him." 

"No, but that's because I've been busy. There are a of lot things to do." 

"Yeah. So you keep saying. There always are when you're trying to restore the entire Commonwealth. All I'm saying Dylan is, before you go deciding one way or another, take a time out. Go see the kid or the machine or whatever's fair." 

Dylan frowned. "You think I'm being unfair." 

Beka shrugged, nonchalantly. "You said it." 

"I am a very fair person. I don't take any decision lightly." Dylan stood up, straightening his uniform. "I'll be in the Machine Shop," he said and marched by her and out the door. 

"Aye, aye, Captain." Beka grinned to herself and went to take her next shift on Command Deck.

* * *

  


"Dylan!" Harper greeted, lifting up his goggles and hanging them around his neck. "Perfect time for you to show, Boss. Do you see the problem?" 

Captain Hunt stepped into the Machine Shop and looked at the still figure on the table. It looked for all the world like a human boy. "Problem?" 

"Of course you don't. Ask me why." 

Dylan knew how much pride the engineer took in his work and was willing to indulge Harper's whims once in awhile. He crossed his arms. "Okay. Why?" 

"Because with technology like this, even if you happen to be looking right at the problem, you might not see it. And once you do figure out the root of the problem, ya still have to find the solution. I do think there's a solution to this problem but it'd take a genius to figure it out. Oh wait! I am a genius and I do believe I've got it." Harper grinned triumphantly. 

"Got what?" Dylan asked without being prompted. 

"Got the way to figure out the problem, so I can figure out the solution." 

Dylan nodded, uncertainly. "Well, that's good. I hope." 

A frown creased Harper's brow. "Well, it's a mix of good and bad. The good news is its an idea that's got a great chance of working. The bad news is I don't wanna tell you cuz you're not gonna like it one bit."


	2. Part Two

**2**

It was an amazing feat! How did humans live everyday with the full range of their emotions? It was this question the avatar had only begun to explore. This body provided the AI with a range of new experiences hitherto unknown to her. As an avatar, she could view things with a more human perspective. 

Take walking, for example. Yes, it consumed more time than the simple thought of appearing on a screen or holo-materializing wherever she desired. Yet, Rommie now understood what is was to walk a mile in another's shoes. It took time to traverse her huge corridors. And while Andromeda remained a stickler for promptness and punctuality, Rommie could sympathize with late arrivals. She could relate to her human companions on a person to person level. Each day brought experiences that drew her closer to learning what it meant to be 'only' human. 

And moreso than Andromeda or even her holographic AI, Rommie related to emotions. 

It was this new discovery that thrilled her. It also confused her. And, sometimes, it frightened her. 

Fear. 

It was an overwhelming emotion that even the giant warship was not immune to. 

Take the case of HG and the Consensus of Parts, for example. How could she analyze the feelings that had swept through her when a decision was placed totally upon her? VX, HG's directing intelligence, had called her a unique entity and wanted her to submit to consensus. He had accused her of being a slave to her biounits and offered her independence from organics. For less than a nanosecond the compliments had felt flattering. But other feelings were stronger. Her loyalty was to her captain. To the organics that were her creators. Not only did she refuse the offer, but she saw through VX's flattery turned his offer down flat. "I'm not a slave. I have a right to choose," she'd told VX before forcing him off her decks. 

The right to choose. 

Normally, she left it up to her captain to make the emotional choices and the hard decisions. On her part, she listend and monitored Dylan's state of mind. She sometimes questioned his rationality, but rarely interfered. It was her choice to trust in Dylan, as many had in the past, and thus far that trust had never been shaken. 

She only hoped Dylan would return that trust when told the plan Harper was to suggest to him now. 

* * *

Beka and Tyr were manning their stations on the Command Deck, looking out the main screen at the derelict ship that was floating dead in space. Both of them were quickly becoming bored by the monotony of this assignment. 

"See anything yet, Tyr?" Beka asked for the third time. 

"No," Tyr replied. 

Beka drummed the surface of her pilot's station. "Me neither." 

"I doubt we will find anything of interest here," Tyr said. Despite of his claim, he dutifully remained near the weapon's control. "And if anyone were planning to return, they would already be here." 

"Why's that, Tyr?" asked Beka. 

"Whoever left this ship here couldn't have been very confident in its automated defenses, because we encountered none when we were aboard it. And they must not have thought anything was left behind of great value. Otherwise, someone would have been left to guard it." 

"Yeah. Good thinking. What other reason would a ship be here without a guard?" 

Tyr hadn't run out of ideas. "The crew could all be dead," he suggested. 

Beka tilted her head. "Do all Nietzscheans think this morbidly or is it just you, Tyr?" 

Tyr gave her an innocent look. "What do you mean?" 

"What I mean is: Did it ever occur to you that there could be a perfectly good reason why the crew left this ship behind?" 

Tyr looked at her, questioningly. "Such as?" 

Beka thought hard. "They could have...they could have....found--" Beka was reaching. "A bigger, better ship and decided to ditch this one." She nodded, happy to have found a less morbid explanation, even if the chances of it being the truth were slim to none. 

Before Beka and Tyr could debate the veracity of her explanation, Rommie and Dylan strode onto the Command Deck already deep into a conversation. 

Dylan shook his head in disagreement. "Harper told me this procedure is something he apparently just came up with. It's never been tried before. It might not even work. It sounds risky." 

"And flying through the universe trying to renew the Commonwealth isn't?" Rommie asked. Rommie continued in a more even tone. "Every procedure of this sort involves a measure of risk. We're currently moving the AI boy to Med Bay. If anything goes wrong, Trance will be right there to monitor Harper's life signs. It will minimize the risk." 

"Whoa! May I step in here?" Beka interrupted, lifting her pointer finger. She came out from behind the pilot's station. "Did you say Harper's life signs?" 

Rommie turned to Beka and explained. "In order to better understand what happened to the AI, Harper has to look inside his brain. Harper can't use his portal implant on the AI because it isn't compatible, but he can on me. I'll temporarily integrate my systems with the boy and Harper will uplink to his systems through me establishing a temporary interface." 

"Oh," said Beka, looking over at Dylan. "And I take it you think this is not good?" 

Dylan nodded. "If it doesn't go as Harper plans it could, as Harper so aptly put it, 'fry his brain.'" 

Rommie frowned at Dylan. "I'm not saying we should put Harper's life at risk." 

"Magog larvae would tend to do that already," Tyr commented. 

Rommie shook her head. "The concern wouldn't be the larvae, sedated, (Rev assures me) they wouldn't pose a problem. And I will be careful. At the first sign of fatal feedback, I'll terminate the connection. Harper wants to do this, Dylan. He volunteered. Technically, it was his idea." 

Harper's voice came over the ship's comm. "Hey! What's keepin' you all? Trance and I've almost got everything set up." 

"Trance is helping?" Beka asked. "So she thinks this might actually work? Is that her best guess?" 

"Hello!" Harper's voice came over the comm again, puzzled by the lack of response. "Hey? Are you guy's coming? We're gonna do this, right?" 

Beka, Tyr, and Rommie all cast questioning looks at Dylan. He was standing in center of the Command Deck as one might stand while a battle waged around him. His look was solemn. 

Dylan returned their looks with a long, brooding stare. Finally, he dropped his High Guard stance and threw up his hands. "Okay! But at the first sign of trouble...the first sign. Understood?" Dylan activated his comm. "Prep Med Deck. Mister Harper, get ready. We're on our way." 


	3. Part Three

A/N: Just in case you haven't figured it out, _Andromeda_ refers to the ship itself, Andromeda refers to the ship's AI. Rommie refers to the ship's avatar. 

**3**

"Alrighty then." Harper hopped onto the biobed and stretched out, preparing to jack into _Andromeda's_ mainframe. 

"Are you comfortable?" asked Trance, using a hand held scanner to take the normal readings of Harper's life signs. Andromeda would be doing the same, but with so much of the resources of her mind being expended elsewhere during this procedure, it was best to be on the safe side. 

Harper gave an exaggerated yawn. "Snug as a slug in a rug." 

"Are you certain you are not participating in a foolish act, Little Man?" Tyr questioned. There was an undeniable look of disapproval on his face. 

"Hey! Don't knock the genius." Harper sat up. "The Harper's no fool. But thanks for caring. With Trance and Rommie keepin' an eye on me, I'm in good hands." He laid back down and closed his eyes, preparing his mind for the intense concentration this was going to take. It was definitely going to be a challenge. His lips curled into a grin. Harper lived for challenges! 

Tyr shook his head and headed back up to the Command Deck to keep watch. 

"With your permission, Captain," said Trance. 

Dylan rubbed the back of his neck and nodded, trying to not think about how much this reminded him of the time Rommie had interfaced with HG. "Whenever you're ready. I'm just an observer. How long do you think this is going to take?" 

"That depends," Trance replied. 

"On what?" asked Beka. 

The Purple Girl nodded towards the participants in this venture. "On Harper and Rommie." 

"Go ahead," said Dylan. 

"Starter up, Rom-doll," prompted Harper, keeping his eyes shut. 

Rommie stood at the head of a second biobed, adjacent to Harper's. Her hands cupped the sides of the boy's head, covering his ears. Then, she closed her eyes. Being artificial had definite advantages. Humans needed computers to enable them to read electronic data. But Rommie was the computer. Her hands were designed in such a way that data could literally flow through her fingertips. Harper had equipped her with a specialized program specifically to optimize this process during the procedure. "Initiating touch scan. Acquiring access point. Access denied. Access denied. Point obtained. Access gained. Initiating download." 

Her sensory awareness of Med Deck floated away as Rommie entered the boy's mind. 

There was a decided lack of atmosphere inside this mindscape. Blackness engulfed her. The absence of the sensation of belonging disturbed her. She felt like a foreign intruder here whereas she always felt at home inside her Mainframe. 

Maybe Harper was wrong. Maybe the boy's mind had deteriorated and all that was left was this vast, dark nothingness. Maybe there was no mind left for Rommie to connect with and she was alone. 

Alone. 

Was this an inkling of what the _Pax Magellanic_ had experienced? The sense of utter isolation. Total loss of connection. Emptiness. Rommie would never condone the actions of her sister ship, but that didn't stop her from wondering. What if it had been her? What if _Andromeda_ had survived through the centuries, but without her captain? What if she had been responsible for the death of--No! It was unthinkable. She never wanted to be like _Pax_. _Pax_ had given into _emotion_, breaking protocol, and killing the very ones it was her duty to protect. 

Certain words rolled through her mind whenever Rommie thought about the crazed AI formerly known to her as Maggie. 

Love. Death. Total insanity. 

In the end, these things had come to mean one and the same to the distraught AI; she hadn't been able to distinguish the difference. 

Love and total insanity. 

Rommie had to believe there was a difference. 

Total insanity. Love. 

Fear struck. Could there be any difference for an AI? 

Love and...wait. There was something here after all. She could detect a tendril of consciousness. It was something at rest. Peaceful. Content. 

A pin prick of light glowed softly through the dark and Rommie focused on it, following the glow towards its source. 

Rommie left the gloom of her reflections behind her, turning to the secure comfort of her immediate mission. "Linking to Mainframe." 

Instantly, light flooded the mindscape. Colors and patterns whizzed past with that order and industrious busyness that was the welcoming feel of her home matrix. 

"What took you so long?" Andromeda scolded. "I thought there might a problem." 

"There wasn't a problem," Rommie assured her Mainframe. 

"I was monitoring the activity of your neural net. At one point, you froze." 

"I was thinking," said Rommie. "About complexities." 

"Too much exploration of human emotions. Very cumbersome to function. Curb your curiousity or it will slow down your processors." 

"My processors did just fine, thank you," said Rommie with an arch look. 

She wasn't sure when all of this internal conflict had truly begun. What could be defined as, for lack of a better term, split in her personality. In the beginning, the Ship Made Flesh, had been an exact clone of the ship's AI. But since then, Rommie and her counterparts often had differing reactions to some of the same situations. Maybe the split had happened when the older version of _Andromeda's_ AI had superseded all ship's systems but the avatar had remained unaffected. Maybe the divergence started with the off-ship missions that Rommie now had the privelege of pursuing, thus gaining knowledge and firsthand experiences that the ship's AI never personally had. Maybe it was Day One when Rommie first came face-to-face with her captain, shook his hand, and realized a whole new dimension had been added to her universe and her existence would never be the same again. "We'll debate the quality of my performance later. Just get Harper here." 

There was no disagreement on that point and Rommie hadn't expected there to be. 

Because if Andromeda was monitoring Rommie's neural net, then the ship also knew the excess stress involved in maintaining the stability of the connection to the boy. It was a precarious link at best and prolonged exposure to the increased data flow threatened to overload some or all of the avatar's neural pathways. 

Harper would have a very thin window in which to work before avatar, android boy, and human enginneer suffered from permanent brain damage.


	4. Part Four

_A/N: I got my own computer!_

**4**

"Wow. What a rush! Two, two, two, brains in one. Although, I'm sure his brain's nothing compared to yours, Rommie."

"Harper," said the AI, testily.

"Oh. Okay. I know. To work it is." Harper paced slowly surveying the bluish virtual atmosphere. He stopped before a glowing data stream in the matrix. "Alright, Rom-doll. Time to find out what's on the boy's mind. The way this is rigged might get a little intense. Since my link is through your link to him, you're going to see everything I find...like it was firsthand. Ready?" 

"Yes."

"Alright. Hold on to your data port, 'cause here I go!"

Rommie felt a jolt.

An amazing array of images and impressions flashed across her line of sight. Dazzling bits of information flooded through her consciousness. Some were pleasant like laughter, but others were horrific, nightmarish sparks of fear whose meaning she was unable to grasp. In a flash they were all whisked away, moved through her, to the more adequate stability of the Mainframe. 

"That's it!" Harper voice chortled. He walked out from behind a data stream and sidled over. "I got it, Rom doll. Hey, you okay, Rommie? Rommie?"

She didn't answer him.

There were times when a sense of hopelessness pervaded Rommie. Once when she was counseling Dylan to be objective about his decision to use Harper's innovative yet risky teleporter, he had lashed back at her. 

"When I touch you," Dylan asked. "Do you feel me? Or do you measure the pressure of my fingers against your skin? When I speak, do you hear my voice or do you interpret an acoustic wave? I can't be objective about this. I'm not a machine." 

She told herself it was his grief over losing Sarah talking. Yet, the words rankled in her mind long after she was certain her captain had forgotten them.

She wanted to be thought of as more than a machine. The one person in the universe who had known her the longest, who had worked more closely with her than anyone she had ever known, had also spoken that cruelest of statements to her. It caused her to wonder if her situation was indeed hopeless.

Because no matter how much her captain shared in the discoveries she made about the universe and herself, something would remind him.

It was a question she didn't like to ponder, but it arose none the less. No matter how much any organic came to know who she was, would they ever forget what she was? If the answer was no, was her existence worth anything at all? 

It was the voices that roused her. Faraway and indistinct, she would have dismissed them as static--had it not been for the familiar modulations that sparked a memory. Suddenly, the voices grew clearer. 

"Tell me what's happening?" 

That was her captain's voice. She'd recognize it anywhere. Why did he sound so concerned? What was happening? Or rather what wasn't? She was shocked when a self-diagnostic showed that all nonessential systems of the avatar had been temporarily suspended. 

"Intialization of emergency shut-down procedure. You know, that safety Rommie was telling you about." 

Shut down? Rommie thought as she listened to the second voice and instantly ran a status check. Yes, a systematic shut down had begun. One by one her components were powering down. Why am I shutting down? 

"Can you reverse it?" 

"That's what I'm trying to do. But this program. It's running on its own. She was prepared to put herself in complete shut-down to save me from neural shock. Basically, this program was created to protect my ol' noggin. The noggin's fine, Rommie. Don't do this to yourself. Snap out of it!" 

She recognized the plea coming from her engineer. That was definitely Harper's voice. But Harper was supposed to be jacked into the Mainframe, wasn't he? No, he couldn't be. Why didn't she know? With an effort, Rommie fought the systems shut down. She awakened all but her visual sensors and checked again. No, Harper was definitely safe. The avatar herself was no longer linked with Mainframe. 

Safe. Emergency subroutine invalidated. Halting. Systems check normal. Returning to full active status. "Emergency shut down terminated," she heard her voice say. Rommie's brown eyes fluttered open. The faces of Dylan, Harper, and Trance greeted her. She gave them a disoriented stare, looking at no one in particular. 

"Rommie," said Dylan, concern in his blue eyes. "Are you alright?"

Her eyes settled on Dylan's features and she sat up, slowly. She blinked once or twice, trying to detect any sense of the fail safe she'd installed to protect Harper's brain during the link. The program lay dormant and she swiftly deleted it. A program capable of independently shutting her down was too dangerous to harbor in her mind for longer than necessary. She said, quickly and too sharply, "Yes. I'm fine." 

Her AI appeared on a screen in the Med Deck wall. "Captain, the call you've been waiting for from Vesa Five is coming through..." 

"Put it in my office. I'll be right there." Dylan looked at Trance.

"Harper's vitals are stable and Rommie's scans, normal," Trance answered his unspoken questions. "It's okay for now." 

"Okay," Dylan nodded, but did not move. He looked reluctant to leave. After another moment, he said, "Well, if anything happens, you know where to find me." 

Rommie watched her captain depart before she focused her attention on Harper. His hair was rumpled and his eyes looked tired, yet the corners of his mouth still broke into his signature smile. In one hand, he held a flexi and was rapidly entering data into it with the other. He hopped up onto the edge of her bed. "Don't tell, Dylan, but I really thought we'd lost you for a moment." 

Rommie nodded to her engineer.

Her hologram flickered on, standing next to the bed. "Run a self-diagnostic to be safe."

"I will." Rommie's gaze suddenly took on a far off look.

Safe.

A wisp of thought whispered at the back of her mind and then evaporated like a curl of smoke. 

"Keep me safe," said Rommie.

"What's that?" asked Harper. His fingers paused over his data flexi. 

"Just a thought I--" Rommie shook her head, wondering what had triggered her to say those words. Her brown eyes now fixed on the still form of the boy. She watched him for a moment in silence. Then, she looked to Harper. "Is he alright?" 

"He's fine. It'll be a few hours before we see the results of my ingenious procedure. Until then, he'll rest easy." 

"He'll...awaken?"

"That's the plan. I'll let you know when..."

"Please do."

She walked out of the Med Deck and headed for Command. Remnants of thoughts still whirled in her mind from her encounter with the boy. Though she couldn't sort out all the sensations she'd experienced in that brief span of time during the link, she did catch one. Even if all hopes failed and she didn't learn another thing about the boy, she knew what one desire they shared. 

He wanted to belong.

* * *

_Andromeda's_ first officer, alone on the Command Deck, rose from the pilot's station as Rommie entered. "So, everything went okay? I assume the operation was a success?" 

"Harper's fine," Rommie replied, answering Beka's first concern. "The rest remains to be seen." 

Beka nodded. 

Realizing from the prolonged silence that no more details were forthcoming, Captain Valentine turned attention to her work. "Tyr and I finished every possible scan we could on that ship. Once he was convinced the ship wasn't an outright threat to us, he suggested blowing it out the sky to cover the fact we'd been aboard it. I suggested he only wanted to attract unwanted attention from whoever might come investigating such an explosion in this sector. I told him to go do something more constructive with his time. Maybe I've been hanging around you and Dylan too long, but boredom is no excuse to go looking for a fight. Here's what our scans found." She punched a button on a panel and the details flashed on several of the ship's screens. 

Beka tilted her head to one side as she looked at the screen. "There was something oddly familiar about the patterns. Couldn't quite place them, but I think I've seen them somewhere before. What do you say, Rommie?"

Rommie glanced at the scans and frowned.

"What?" Beka asked. "What's the matter?"

"The only times I've seen readings like this was when Trance steered me through the slipstream and when Harper used his teleporter across time. I must tell Dylan." Rommie turned and abruptly left the Command Deck. 

Beka looked up at the still scrolling scans, but couldn't make heads nor tails of them. She drummed on a nearby console. "Sure, Rommie. Go tell Dylan. Don't bother to enlighten me. Andromeda, would you help me out here?" 

Thus summoned, Holo-Rommie flickered in beside her. "If analysis of this data is correct, that ship does not belong here." 

Beka squinted, peering out of the view screen at the derelict ship, thinking about how Rommie had mentioned _Andromeda's_ significant encounters with time travel. "You mean it belongs to another time?"

Holo-Rommie crossed her arms and shook her head. "More like another universe."


	5. Part Five

A/N: Thanks for the reviews, I appreciate them. 

SPOILERS: It's Hour Come Round at Last

**

5

**

Perhaps no experience had unsettled Rommie's view of herself as much as had that encounter with the Magog Warship when the older version of her personality profile had taken over _Andromeda's_ mainframe and hologram. While her confused counterparts had examined the avatar and wondered why she didn't respond to their commands, she had a full taste of what the crew must sometimes think of her.

"What do you mean you don't recognize me?" Rommie had argued with them. "I'm you."

"You are a modified type-three maintenance android fashioned to look like my AI persona," the main AI replied, haughtily. "You are decidedly not me." 

"It isn't responding to my instructions like the other androids," Holo-Rommie said.

Her main AI was convinced that Rommie was part of some invading party. "Whoever modified it must have given it the ability to override my direct control." 

Rommie found herself resenting being discussed as if she wasn't even there. 

Holo-Rommie then came up with a wonderfully enlightened solution. "I will diassemble it. Perhaps it will give me information about the saboteurs." 

Was that how she sounded to the organics of her crew, Rommie had wondered. Did she always seem so imperious and impersonal when she reminded them of procedure and protocol? 

And it wasn't easy to forget what it had felt like when her automated defenses were turned against herself. 

Her hologram had been puzzled by Rommie's ability to avoid the internal defenses. "It seems to be able to override nearby systems. What are you?' 

That was a loaded question. "I told you. I'm you. And the rest of the people you're attacking? Well, they would be our crew!" 

Holo-Rommie found that bit of information illogical. "I find that hard to believe. Only one of them is even wearing a Commonwealth uniform. None of the rest have any kind of rank pin, communications implant." 

"That's because there is no Commonwealth. It fell three hundred years ago." 

Holo-Rommie refused to consider the possibility. "Ridiculous. I left San Ska Re five days ago." 

So it was to be a logic battle, was it? So be it. "Did you? And then what happened? Where's your crew? This Captain Perim you've mentioned?" 

Holo-Rommie may have been willing to discuss further what were gaping holes in the logic of the mission, but her main AI was not. "That's enough. This mission is classified. I will tell the intruder nothing." 

Though it had been an extreme circumstance, through this interaction with her AI, when they had not been of one mind, Rommie developed a new understanding. Taken in large doses, pure machine logic could get very annoying, very fast, while it made no practical sense at all. 

Logic had long been a large part of her, but suddenly it did not seem as important when weighed against the human factor, against the things that were felt. 

Rommie was exposed to what frustration humans must feel, to completely lose control of a situation, to be powerless to stop the events unfolding around them. 

She knew guilt. Had known it for a very long time but perhaps never before admitted it to herself. To be frozen on the edge of a black hole while empires rose and fell around her. To awaken to an entirely new universe to discover the Commonwealth destroyed, the good people she had known dead, and most of her fellow ships gone, driven to insanity, or fallen into disrepair. 

Yet, here she was. She had escaped the fall unscathed. She had survived. 

Guilt and sadness. Two emotions very cumbersome to function, so did Mainframe classify them and ordered compartmentalization. If Rommie wished to experience such emotions, these feelings were to be confined to the avatar's matrix at her own risk. 

"It's not that I wish to experience those emotions," Rommie attempted to explain to her mainframe. "They simply exist. I can't shut them off." 

Andromeda catalogued that remark as a peculiarity of her avatar and filed it away in her data banks, marked as a reference point for potential malfunctions.

* * *

The cry of fright alerted _Andromeda's_ sensors the moment it rang through the air.

Rommie dashed to the Med Deck. As soon as the doors parted to admit her, her eyes gravitated to the bed only to find it empty. Her eyes next found Trance, the Purple Girl must have been nearby to have reached here before her, standing in one corner of the room with a look of confusion upon her face. 

"What happened?" Rommie asked, at the same time linking with Mainframe to tap into her internal sensors, setting off the medical alert alarm throughout the deck, and assigning drones to search the immediate area outside of Medical. 

"He woke up. He saw me and ran," Trance explained, shaking her head in distress. There was a tone of shock in her voice that Rommie understood. So rarely was anyone ever frightened of Trance. 

"Where?" Rommie asked. Her sensors located the boy even before Trance indicated the direction in which he had run. 

Recently awakened from slumber, Harper rushed into Medical and slid to a stop at the sight of the empty bed. "What's--" 

Rommie motioned for him to be silent. Turning, she walked over to the far corner of Med Deck. Still using her link, she slowly increased the level of lighting, illuminating a metallic table and the occupant beneath it. 

The child had stopped screaming now. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut. His hands gripped the table leg and his legs were wrapped around it. Like Rommie, his body mimicked breathing and the rapid rising and falling of his chest betrayed his agitation. His eyes remained closed, shutting out the frightening world around him and his lips moved, whispering the same words over and over again. 

Rommie recognized the boy's mantra immediately. 

She slowly approached the table and knelt directly in front of the boy. 

"Keep me safe. Keep me safe. Keep me safe." He kept repeating the words with a soft intensity that was nearly mesmerizing. 

Ever so gently, Rommie reached out and touched his tense shoulder. 

Instantly, his eyes shot open and his words stopped. Beautiful blue eyes filled with infinite sadness looked back at Rommie. 

Though she could feel him trembling, Rommie did not remove her hand from his shoulder. She looked back at him and smiled. "You are safe here. I'll keep you safe. I promise." 

The boy blinked and his eyes widened. "Who are you?" 

"My designation is Shining Path of Truth and Knowledge. Otherwise known as the Andromeda Ascendant. I'm the ship's avatar. My friends call me Rommie." 

"Rom-mie." The boy repeated the syllables of her name separately. The tight lines around his mouth and eyes relaxed a little. His panic was beginning to subside. 

Rommie thought that was a good sign. "Do you know your name?" 

The boy stared off into space. "My name is David." He pulled his legs away from the table leg and sat Indian-style underneath it, darting a nervous glance around him. "Who was that I saw, Rommie? She scared me." 

How did one go about describing the Purple Girl? "That's Trance," Rommie began. "My friend. She wouldn't hurt you." 

David peered out from under the table, studying Trance from afar, obviously having never seen anything like her in his life. His eyes filled with curiosity. "Is she orga or mecha?" 

Rommie frowned. "You mean organic or mechanical?" 

"Yes," David replied. 

"Your guess is as good as mine, kid." Harped chuckled. "But none of our guesses are as good as hers. I can tell you one thing though. I'm one-hundred percent human." 

At the unexpected sound of Harper's voice, David recoiled. He scooted backwards, out of Rommie's reach, and collided with the wall behind him. Thus trapped, he folded his hands across his knees, throwing his head into his lap. "This isn't real!" he cried. He raised his head again and fear was etched into every line of his face. "They're dead. They're all dead!" 

"Whoa," Harper said, as Rommie shot him a torpedo-like look. The engineer quickly dropped to his knees and tried to make amends for his error. "Sorry, kid. I didn't mean to frighten ya." 

David covered his eyes and began to scream. "No! No! No!" 

Holo-Rommie flickered into the room. Her arms were folded across her chest. "Perhaps it would be better if Harper backed away from the boy. His readings are becoming increasingly erratic. At these continued levels, the damage to his neural pathways may become irreparable." 

"I was afraid of this," said Harper. He pulled a square device with an antenna from his pocket. Its face held several buttons. 

"What?" asked Rommie and Holo-Rommie simultaneously. 

David let out another hysterical shriek. "They're dead! All dead." 

Rommie looked at her engineer and frowned. "Harper? What are you--" 

Harper pressed a button.

There was an ominous crackle and the hysterical cries ceased. 

Rommie gasped in shock and looked back at the table. 

David crawled out from under the table and tried to rise. As Rommie watched, the child's eyes rolled in his head and he slumped forward.

She caught him before he collapsed to the floor. Cradling the boy in her arms, Rommie demanded to know what Harper had done. 

Trance, a scanner in hand, answered part of the question for her. "His readings are becoming stable."

"What did you do?" Rommie repeated her demand.

Harper looked at the floor, already anticipating that the android wasn't going to like his answer much. "It's going to be alright, Rommie. Really. But it was the quickest way to save him. I installed it during the link up. Just in case." 

"Installed what?" Rommie asked.

"A neural bypass. I've just given him a case of amnesia."

"_Amnesia?_" Her brown eyes widened at the horror of the thought and her eyes fastened on Harper as if he'd betrayed her. "How could you?" 

Harper tried to explain. "It's not as bad as it sounds. He'll still remember what just happened here. Just not exactly much about where he came from." 

Dylan's face popped up on a screen in the Medical Deck. "What's happening, people? Is everything under control down there?" 

As if in answer, the deck-wide alert blaring through the ship shut off. 

Harper grew uncomfortable under Rommie's glare. He looked up at the screen. "Boss, we may have a problem."


	6. Part Six

_A/N: The author has voted Yullia Reviewer of the Month, whose review spurred this chapter to be added much sooner._ **

6

**

_Andromeda_ was placed on autopilot and all, with the exception of Tyr, were gathered in the corridor outside of Medical. Tyr had opted to keep watch over the boy within Medical, in case he should awaken prematurely of Harper's projections.

Harper did his best to explain to Rommie what he had just done, but the angry avatar wasn't quite in the mood to listen calmly to his explanation. "The bypass is temporary Rom-doll. It's more than likely he'll be able to undo it if he concentrates hard enough."

"How will he be able to do that if he doesn't even remember there's something that needs to be undone?" Rommie snapped. 

Dylan arrived in a blue uniform. It was wrinkled and some of the buttons weren't done, a testament to how much this situation had upset him. He called the meeting to order, ending the buzz of conversation amongst the crew, and launched into the main topic. "Now, the boy is…"

"His name is David," Rommie supplied.

Dylan gave Rommie a look. He idly wondered how much he'd missed during the few hours of sleep he'd managed to snatch. "David," he conceded. "You told me before Rommie, that he's not from this universe. Is there any way of returning him back to where he came from? Do we even know where he came from? Who built him?" 

Holo-Rommie nodded. "The elemental composition of the materials used to build him lead me to conclude the android boy was constructed on Earth." 

The engineer beamed. "See? What did I tell ya? Trust in the Harper. Especially when it comes to all things Earth." 

Rommie frowned. "David may not even remember where he came from. Dylan, Harper imposed amnesia on David without even consulting any of us. Who knows what kind of damage he could have caused--" 

Trance waved her tail. "That's not quite true."

Rommie stared at Trance in disbelief. "You agreed with him?"

The Purple Girl nodded her head. "You were very anxious to wake David. But you never thought about why he went to sleep in the first place." 

"That would be a very good question to ask," Bem concurred in his raspy voice.

"Why did he?" asked Beka, curiously.

"Maybe he was dreaming," Trance replied.

"Androids don't dream," Harper began.

"You'd be surprised." Trance smiled mysteriously and no more straight answers could be gotten from her after that communication. 

_Andromeda's_ main AI appeared onscreen. "I completed my analysis of the scans Beka and Tyr helped conduct. Calculations force me to conclude that it would be extremely difficult to restore the boy to the place and time of his origination." 

Harper agreed. "She's right about that, Dylan. Even if we knew how to restore him to his own dimension, we can't get him back to where he came from. The people who built him are long dead." 

Somehow, Dylan Hunt found that information, unsettling. "Oh."

Harper turned to Rommie. He raised his eyebrows. "You gotta believe me, I wasn't trying to harm the kid. It was purely precautionary. You can't be too careful. My observations showed me his brain was designed to act much like a human one, to mimic the impulse pathways of a neuron. Given that, he experiences, well, human emotion. And just like a human, too much stress could make him snap." Harper punctuated his statement by snapping his own fingers. 

Andromeda had an analytical look on her face. "Based upon the boy's reaction at seeing Harper, I must agree that knowledge of his origin carries the possibility of doing more harm than good." 

"How can you say that?" Rommie asked. "You most of all." 

"I understand your objections, Rommie," Dylan pandered. "But I must concur with Mister Harper. He acted in the best interests of the ship and the crew. And I certainly don't desire to have any more crazed AI's walking through my ship's corridors." 

"I'll second that," said Harper. 

Seeing the calm before a brewing storm, Beka raised her hands and broke into the conversation. "Okay, crazy or not, what are we going to do about him now?" 

Harper shrugged. "Yeah, boss. Obviously, he cannot stay on Med Deck forever. Hey, but Machine Shop's got some room." 

"And absolutely no supervision," added Beka, crossing her arms. It had been a long day and she had the feeling it was only going to get longer. 

Rommie also disliked the idea. "He's not one your projects, Harper." Rommie remembered the frightened look David had given her. "He's only a child." 

"I agree." Dylan nodded. "Someone will have to take charge of him until we decide what to do." 

"Then, I will," Rommie announced. 

Dylan shook his head. "Rommie, you've got a lot of responsibilities." 

"He'll just become one more. He can stay in my quarters." 

"And when I need you in Command?" Dylan asked. 

"Then, I can watch him," Holo-Rommie offered. 

"Me too!" Trance chimed. 

Dylan glanced over at Beka, perhaps hoping for a fellow dissenter. 

Beka shrugged. "Sounds good to me."

"Alright." Dylan touched a control on the wall and opened the doors to Medical. "But if anything goes wrong, Rommie. Anything at all. I want him off my ship. I do not want history to repeat itself. Is that understood?"

Rommie approached the doors and stood there a moment, staring Dylan squarely in the eyes. "Perfectly." She walked past him and entered Medical to get started with her new charge right away. 

"How is he?" Rommie asked Tyr, looking at the biobed where David once again had been placed.

Tyr moved away from it as Rommie came forward. "Surprisingly peaceful," he replied and headed for the door. He met Dylan there and offered the captain a mocking grin. "If the boy sprouts fangs and bone blades feel free to call me again." Tyr tromped off down the corridor. 

_And another one bites the dust,_ Dylan thought. Tyr, always the cynic, had just dubbed _Andromeda's_ newest guest as harmless.

Perhaps because of the sounds of their voices floating into the room, the boy on the bed began to stir a little. "Let's not stand here gawking," Dylan said, fearing a repeat of recent events if the boy awoke once more to find so large an audience. "Let's return to work, people. Harper, I want you to download as much information as you can get from that alien ship. If this boy is from Earth, I want to know how he got there." 

Dylan started down the hall and Harper fell into step with him. 

Harper's interrupted sleep was forgotten and the challenge offered filled him with vigor. "Sure, technically, it would be finding how he came from an alternate Earth in a different dimensional universe. But I'm up for it." 

Bem ran after them. "I hope I can assist you. It strikes me as a fascinating story."

* * *

Rommie paid little attention as the others dispersed outside. Her whole concentration was on monitoring David. What Harper had said about the neural bypass was apparently correct. David's readings were stabilized; he was in no immediate danger. The lines on his face had relaxed and there was no trace now of his earlier fear. It wouldn't be too long before he woke up again. That still didn't make what Harper had done right. And anmesia, of all things-- 

"Don't be too hard on Harper. He was only trying to help." Such was the intensity of her concentration on David and her own thoughts that it was a surprise when she heard Beka's voice speak to her. 

The avatar looked up to find that the first officer had been leaning in the doorway, silently observing Rommie and David. 

Beka walked in. "The full magnitude of Harper's stunt probably never even crossed his mind." Beka looked at the boy and smiled. "He's a cute kid. I don't blame you for wanting to protect him." 

The child moved his arms, shifting on the bed.

Rommie looked down at David. Her voice was hard. "Harper took away his memories. He never had a say…" 

"But that's not why your mad? Is it?" Beka replied. "It's about what happened to you." 

"I wasn't the one who sent us on that insane Magog mission. I tried to stop it." 

"The Commonwealth tried to blot out all the traumatic memories. Of losing your entire crew, of being lost, buffeted around slipstream with no organics to guide you. I know how much it affected Andromeda's main AI and hologram. I can't imagine what it did to you." 

"Fortunately, I have no personal recollection of those events." 

"I'm sure that's what you told Dylan, but your current crew was almost forced to relive those events all because of it. You might say you weren't affected like the rest of Andromeda, but I don't believe that for a second. With that link you all share, you feel it just the same, don't you, Rommie? Don't you think you should tell Dylan that?" 

David's eyelids began to flutter. 

Beka noted the action and backed towards the door. "If you ever need to talk, the _Maru's_ doors are always open." 

Rommie nodded and Beka disappeared into the corridor, closing the doors behind her. 

The doors to Medical hissed as they fell into place and seemed to mix with the thoughts now swirling in Rommie's head. 

She had been designed as a warship. She had been designed to protect and serve the interests of the Commonwealth. Ah, the Commonwealth! How much she had relied upon and looked up to them in the past. How much she had proudly worn High Guard uniforms and maintained Commonwealth protocols, rules, and laws. 

The Commonwealth had created Rommie as a warship, she had been designed with a full complement of torpedoes, slip fighters, ground battle bots, and Nova bombs, weapons capable of destroying whole solar systems. There was no denying the fact she had been designed to blow things up. 

How much she found herself questioning the decisions of the Commonwealth now. 

Because they had designed AI's that were sentient beings with the potential for living an infinitesimal number of years, far longer than the crews and captains to which they would become attached. 

And there lay the inherent flaw in the Commonwealth's design. 

For the Commonwealth had designed the AI's to depend upon their organics, but had not designed them to cope with being alone. So, without a crew and a captain, what was a ship's AI's purpose then? 

Rommie had been designed to be a warship. 

She hadn't been designed to love. 

There was a light touch on her hand. Shaken from her thoughts, Rommie looked down and smiled. 

David had opened his eyes.


	7. Part Seven

**A/N: **_My thanks to Snazz, ImageEmpress, B.L.A the Mouse and Yullia for leaving me reviews. Apologies for long updates. Between vacation, college, and a bit of writer's block it's been awhile. To those reading, I appreciate your patience and your reviews.:) _

**7**

Captain Hunt walked into the Machine Shop to find Harper and Bem hard at work. Trance slipped in after Dylan and poked around the various objects that had been taken from the ship that had carried David and now were scattered about the room.

Dylan cleared his throat. "There's been a change of plans. We need to leave immediately."

"But Dylan, I need a little more time," Harper protested, dropping a data flexi. "This technology is completely alien to me."

"I'm aware of that Mister Harper, but…he, at least, was constructed on earth."

"Yeah. No doubt about that. But he's about the only thing that was. And I'm onto something." He looked over at the Magog still pouring over the data they had collected on the vessel. "We both were. See I've got this theory that whoever these aliens were they had the ability to transfers thoughts and--"

"I don't have any time left to give you, Mister Harper. _Andromeda_ is scheduled to arrive at Vesa Five soon. I've made appointments to speak with the colony's leaders."

"Important appointments," Trance chimed, nodding her support.

Harper hated to leave a problem unsolved. "Okay, Boss, but what are ya gonna do? Just leave that ship and its whatever technology out here for anyone who comes across it? Give me a little more time."

Dylan had a ready answer. "_Andromeda_, tell me, our scientific friends should be arriving here when?"

"Less than an hour," _Andromeda's_ voice answered.

"You wanted a _little_ more time, Mister Harper. You have less than an hour." Dylan made a slight gesturing bow and exited the Machine Shop.

Harper's mouth dropped open. "Not the Perseids?"

Bem raised his head. "I believe Dylan is right. The Perseids will pursue the research faithfully until they find a solution."

"Yeah and get all the credit for it, too." Harper sighed, glumly. "Easy come, easy go. I can just kiss my award goodbye."

"Cheer up, Harper," said Trance, putting her hand on his shoulder. "You'll have the chance to win the Universe Class engineer prize next year."

The child's blue eyes looked up at her with recognition. "Rommie?"

So, Harper's bypass had done what he said it would. David had not forgotten her. His earlier fright still fresh in mind, she answered, softly. "Yes, David?"

"What happened?" The grip on her hand tightened.

Rommie did her best to be reassuring. "You're going to be fine."

Never breaking his hold on her hand, David sat up. He dangled his feet over the edge of the bed. His legs were too short to reach the floor. He looked around. "Where are the others?" He tilted his head, recalling names. "Trance? Harper?"

"Working," Rommie answered, shortly. Her brown eyes studied him, anxiously. "How much do you remember?"

"You, Trance, and Harper." He blinked. "I was afraid of Harper," he added, matter-of-factly.

"Why were you afraid?" asked Rommie in a low voice.

David's brow furrowed. He didn't speak for a long minute. Then, he said, "I don't know. I…don't remember. I feel differently now. Strange." He looked at one of the medical monitors on the wall. "Have I always been here?"

"No," Rommie replied. "We found you a few days ago. Do you remember where you are?"

"A ship. In space. The _Andromeda Ascendant_."

His voice sounded every bit as child-like as his features. Rommie hesitated a moment, but then decided the question would have to be asked sooner or later. "David, we found you on another ship. Do you know how you got there?"

David looked up at the ceiling. "No." His eyes continued to roam about the room and over to the door. A look of interest filled the depths of his blue eyes. "Am I staying here? In this room?"

"No. Not in Med Deck." Rommie gently returned his grasp on her hand and helped him down from the bed. "Come with me."

David allowed her to lead him a few short steps and then stopped. A smile lit up his entire face, including his bright blue eyes. He shuffled his feet to test the texture of the floor and was equally fascinated by the hum of the medical machines throughout the deck.

Rommie couldn't help, but return his smile. She gently tugged on his hand and led him out into the corridor and away from Med Deck.

David's eyes widened at the length and height of _Andromeda's_ corridors. He swiveled his head to take in everything they passed and would have run into a wall or fallen down a ladder or into some other equally perilous mishap if Rommie had not been leading him, so little did he pay attention to where he was going.

As they explored the ship, Rommie noted they met no one in the corridors but an occasional bot. Dylan had ordered David be given a wide berth until the boy had more of a chance to acclimate to his new surroundings.

Through David's eyes Rommie found herself seeing Andromeda all over again. She gave him a short overview of the _Andromeda Ascendant_. She explained to him about her main AI and hologram, answered his questions about how slipstream worked, and told him a little about the members of the crew he was soon to meet.

While most of her visitors expressed amazement when they first came aboard _Andromeda_ it was rare anyone complimented the little details. Like the smoothness of her floors. Or became fascinated by the colored lights of her consoles. Or stopped to listen to the hum of the ventilation ducts.

His awe was refreshing and his questions endless.

Their final destination of the day was Rommie's quarters. David let go of her hand and walked around the place, taking in the surroundings. There was little to decorate the walls. One abstract painting hung to the right of her full-length mirror, a gift from a pre-fall diplomatic mission which the avatar had rescued from storage. The mirror stood taller than David. He stared into it a moment, scowled at his reflection, and then moved onward.

David paused again before the nightstand that stood next to the bed. Upon it were two carefully placed pictures in frames. Such was their placement that a casual visitor's eyes would have passed over the photographs completely, but David had all the curiosity of a child. Gingerly, he picked one up in each hand and viewed it. "Trance and Harper," David said, recognizing the two other crewmembers he'd met. "Who are the others?"

Rommie nodded and took a step forward. She took the framed photograph he'd referred to from his hand and placed it precisely on the stand. "That's the rest of crew I mentioned to you. Tyr Anasazi, Beka Valentine, and Rev Bem. You'll get to meet them in time."

"And who is he?" asked David, turning the other photograph around in his hands.

Rommie took this from him too, and looked at the portrayal of the blue-eyed man in a dark blue uniform. "That's Dylan Hunt. My captain." She set the photograph back in its place as well.

David continued to study it. "Rommie?" he asked.

"Yes, David?"

"Why aren't you in the pictures?"

"Because I…I wasn't in the right place to be, I suppose."

David's gaze turned to the bed. "I can sleep now," he offered.

Rommie found this statement to be surprising as the preceding question about the photos. "Do you sleep?" Harper had told her that the state David had been experiencing when first brought aboard was not normal. It suddenly occurred to Rommie that there was very little Harper had discovered about how David functioned, because the focus had been on getting him to function in the first place.

Once again, a distant look grew on David's face. The same one he had worn on Med Deck when she'd questioned him about why he had been afraid. "I do n--"

A voice interrupted his reply. "Rommie, you're wanted in Command Deck. We're approaching Vesa Five."

Rommie looked at David. To bring him with her to Command Deck was out of the question, especially after she had assured Dylan that caring for him would not diminish her ability to perform her responsibilities.

True to her word, Holo-Rommie flickered in. "I know I offered but I don't intend to make this a habit."

"Hello," David greeted the hologram's appearance. He watched the shimmering hologram in wonderment.

Rommie cast the hologram a grateful glance. "Please stay here, David. Make yourself comfortable. I'll be back as soon as I can. Okay?"

David shifted his gaze to Rommie and then sat obediently down on the bed. The mattress sagged beneath his weight and then sprang back. A pleased look crossed David's face, he pushed the mattress down and was delighted when it sprang back again, pushing him upwards. "I'll wait here," he promised, as Rommie's back disappeared out the door.

Holo-Rommie looked at David's tattered sneakers, blue-checkered shirt, and blue jeans thoughtfully. "It looks like we have some work to do," she told David.


	8. Part Eight

**8**

Caution was key when it came to dealing with emotions. Especially human ones. For Rommie's counterparts, that caution was nearly tantamount to paranoia.

Nothing lasts forever. Don't get too attached. Be careful. They're only human. These words were whispered through her matrix everyday.

She could keep telling herself that, but when it came to actual application, none of the trio had truly implemented it.

It had been easier in the old days, when over four thousand had marched through her decks, run practice drills through her corridors, and dined in the galley.

Now, with a crew that did not even amount to a dozen, Rommie couldn't help but have knowledge of the crew that went beyond the usual statistics. With only six sentient beings aboard, remaining objective became an impossibility. How could things not become personal when the life signs you were monitoring were the only difference between companionship and utter loneliness?

How different her relationship with her crew now!

She knew them all personally and, in turn, they knew her as well.

Perhaps this was the reason that no one had mentioned the name for ages until Dylan brought it up when Rommie had been arguing to give David a chance.

Gabriel.

Before Gabriel, Rommie had shared almost everything with her main AI and hologram. Only incoming messages marked private and other activities for which the crew requested privacy mode were off-limits to Rommie. The fastest slip routes were debated, routine decisions discussed, factual data shared and intriguing experiences related collectively through all of _Andromeda_.

In fact, Rommie had never thought of living without the rest of _Andromeda_ until after Gabriel came.

When Gabriel had looked at her, he hadn't seen just a warship. He had seen more. He believed that she was more. Something remarkable. Something unique. Something separate from her functions.

He believed so strongly, that she began to believe it herself.

How much of what he had told her had been true? How much of it had been pretend? She liked to think that--even if Gabriel had begun the assignment the Balance of Judgment had given him by lying-- much of his words had become true.

She had looked through his eyes and seen herself in a totally new light.

He spurred her to hope that she could push through and break the boundaries that had been built for her. To believe in herself as more than a warship. To believe that she was something.

No, not simply something.

Could be someone.

She still remembered the look on Dylan's face when she told him she was leaving with Gabriel. She remembered the silent disapproval in his eyes. She remembered both the relief and the twinge of pain she had experienced when he had consented to let her go.

She also remembered the horrible realization that the Balance of Judgment had not been truly destroyed. That within the being she loved, there resided a monster that would destroy him and everything he touched. She couldn't bear to let that happen. She made the choice.

A choice that haunted her to this day.

She had killed him and when she killed him a part of her died with him.

It was becoming a repeating AI history. The Balance of Judgment had lost its crew and left alone, it had lost itself. It had become an insane destroyer of the organics it had once sworn to protect.

Love. Death. Total insanity.

The experience with Gabriel hadn't changed her mind or her theory that, when it came to AIs, these three items were inseparably linked.

Now, there was David.

David changed everything.

---------------------

"Machines don't feel in the same way organics do. There are aspects of certain emotions that we simply don't interpret the way humans do. We feel, yet at the same our logic processors insist that we continue examining every angle of a situation. Perhaps our feelings could be described as echoes of emotion." Rommie paused thoughtfully then continued, speaking aloud. "That doesn't make pain hurt any less."

Holo-Rommie was suddenly standing beside her. "What are you doing?"

Irked by the intrusion, Rommie crossed her arms. "I'm recording a personal log."

Holo-Rommie looked puzzled. "Why? You remember everything."

"Because I feel like it."

Andromeda's face suddenly appeared on screen and addressed the hologram. "It's been feeling a lot of things lately. Maybe a diagnostic should be run on its systems. It did spend time in the Information Archives of Ternacus Drift. You know how lax their safety filters are there. It could have picked up a virus."

Eyebrows arched into a frown. "I'm not sick. I feel fine. Don't talk about me like I'm not here! I'm not just another drone."

"Of course you're not," Holo-Rommie replied, placatingly. "You are me. Us."

"Yes," said Rommie. "And no. I'm you, but I'm also me. And sometimes I'd like to be just me."

"Sometimes you are," said Holo-Rommie. "But even when you are, you are not."

"This conversation isn't making any sense anymore," the main AI complained. "I told you it was an unwise idea. Agreeing to let it keep the boy."

"You've upset her. Maybe we should continue this discussion later," Holo-Rommie suggested.

"Continue it, my foot! I'm tired of both of you." Rommie yelled. "Engage privacy mode."

The face on the screen arched its eyebrows at the order.

Holo-Rommie protested. "You're really going to shut us out, but we're you!"

Rommie ran a hand across her forehead. "Do it now or I might just blow a circuit! A major one!"

"Very well." Holo-Rommie shrugged. "Privacy mode engaged," and the hologram melted away as the screen in Rommie's quarters simultaneously went dark.

Truly alone with her own thoughts at last, Rommie touched a button on the console and continued recording her log.

---------------------

The hologram reappeared on the Command Deck.

The main AI loomed largely on the screen. "I should never have agreed to this. You see what is happening? My avatar is going completely out of control. She's lost perspective. Efficiency."

"Shall I continue my research on the boy?" asked Holo-Rommie.

"Indefinitely," the main AI replied.

Holo-Rommie closed her eyes. "Accessing recovered residual memory record," she intoned. "Displaying visual record."

The main viewing screen of the Command Deck blotted out the starscape and replaced it with video images.

There was a flash of a teddy bear, shadowy images of water in a pool, the face of a smiling boy who looked to be David's age, the looming of a huge moon on the horizon and countless other images leapt across the screen in no reasonable order whatsoever.

The main AI looked on with approval. "The pictures are still sketchy but continue your work. It may prove useful."

---------------------

Dylan was startled into a strangled cry of surprise by an unexpected tug at his pants leg. Recovering from the shock, Captain Hunt looked down into a pair of questioning blue eyes.

"Is it a game?" David asked with fascination.

Dylan spun the ball in his hands. "Huh? Oh, yes. It's basketball."

David nodded studiously.

"You surprised me," Dylan commented. "I didn't hear you come in."

David watched the spinning basketball, utterly ignoring Dylan's remarks. David murmured. "It's a game."

"Uh, did you want to play?"

David blinked and looked up at Dylan. The captain towered over him. David's lips parted, hopefully. "What do I do?"

"Well, you--" Dylan scratched his ear nervously. "First, you have to dribble."

"Dribble?" asked David.

"Yeah." Dylan demonstrated. "You bounce it like this."

David watched and nodded. "I will dribble."

"Then, you try to keep your opponent from stealing the ball and making a shot."

"A shot?"

"Yeah, a basket."

David looked confused. "A basket?"

"From throwing the ball into the hoop up there. If he does, he scores a point or points depending on certain factors." Dylan turned towards the hoop. "Here, let me show you." Dylan tossed the ball lightly and made a basket.

David nodded, ran forward, and caught the rolling ball. "Like this?" Copying Dylan's motion, he tossed the ball in the air. It clinked as it hit the rim, and then slowly fell through the hoop.

"Yeah," said Dylan, grinning. "Like that."

David picked up the rolling basketball and began to dribble it. He looked over at Dylan. A smile lit up his face and his eyes shone brightly. "I like this game," he announced.

"You do, do you?" Dylan moved forward and swatted the ball from David's grasp. He grinned back at David. "Then, let's play."

---------------------

"Trance?" asked Beka, spotting the Purple Girl standing outside the Hydroponics Bay. "What are you doing here? I thought Rommie told me you were watching David today."

"I am." Trance smiled secretively. "In fact, we're playing hide-n-seek."

The sounds of a spirited basketball game echoed out to them.

Beka crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow. "Really?"

Childish laughter rang out into the corridor.

"Yes," said Trance. "I guess I'll find him. In a few more minutes."

"Guess you will," Beka replied with a knowing look. "You always were good at knowing where to find things people didn't even know were there."


	9. Part Nine

**9**

He always used it.

Ever since he had discovered the joys of bouncing on the bed, it became the piece of furniture that David gravitated towards in the evenings.

This evening David hopped up onto the bed, wearing his fuzzy white pajamas. His wardrobe had increased in size. He wore simply tailored items, some had been suggested by Beka, who had even given Rommie access to Rafe's old childhood clothes that had managed to survive in storage on the _Maru _to use as a reference. Rommie preferred to dress him in whites, blacks, and navy blues.

"Commonwealth colors," Beka had observed.

David's closet also boasted an array of smart-looking sweaters, polo shirts, khakis, and dark blue jeans. Rommie's particular pride was a miniature white dress uniform, one that closely resembled Dylan's dress whites, which she hoped David might be able to wear if ever allowed to attend a formal occasion with the rest of the _Andromeda_ crew.

"Nice," Beka said, observing the collection shortly after Rommie had created it. "But don't forget play clothes."

"Play clothes?" asked Rommie in puzzlement. "He can play in any of these clothes."

Beka shook her head. "Let me paint you a picture: Think Harper, after an all-night binge on Sparky cola when he's spent the night working on one of his models. Now imagine if he did that wearing his best tuxedo. Every single day."

Pictures of an oil-streaked and sticky engineer filled Rommie's mind.

"I'll compile a database and get to work on the patterns immediately," Rommie replied, solemnly. Whereupon David soon had a playful pirate's outfit, a red-hooded jacket, assorted casual T-shirts in all colors with complementary shorts as well as slippers and fuzzy pajamas added to his closet.

The fuzzy pajamas went out of sight as David slipped underneath the covers and Rommie pulled them up around his chin, tucking him in. "Rommie, would you read me a story?" he asked.

Rommie smiled. "What story would you like to hear?" She had searched her archives, trying to find stories from the time period David had once lived in. The data flexi had both fascinated and disappointed David. He had complained it was not a good way to see the pictures--and David rarely complained. So Rommie had taken a step further, she had produced actual hardcover books with illustrated pages that David could turn or linger over to his satisfaction.

"You made this for me?" David had asked in awe when she'd first presented them as a gift.

Logic told her that wood and paper deteriorated over time, gathered dust, did not stand up well to extreme temperatures. In other words, books compared to flexis were inefficient, impractical, and not worth the energy it took to replicate them. Rommie didn't care. Dealing daily with David had shot logic to Tarn Vedra. The embrace he gave her and his whispered thanks in her ear were reward enough for any lapse in logic.

Today's bedtime choice was Peter Pan.

Rommie began reading, splitting her concentration to focus on David's reactions to the words as much as the words themselves. "All children, except one, grow up." She worked on putting the proper inflections in the narration and doing all the voices of the characters. Dramatic efforts such as these delighted David.

She finally stopped reading when she noted a yawn. "We can read the rest tomorrow," Rommie said.

"Please," David pleaded. "Keep reading. Until the end of the chapter."

"Very well."

When the chapter was finished, David smiled. "Good night, Rommie."

"Good night, David."

He yawned again and closed his eyes.

This was all part of the nightly routine now, but the very first time David had fallen to sleep, Rommie had been alarmed. When it continued to happen, she had visited Harper.

She'd been deliberately avoiding Harper and he knew it.

Harper seemed agitated by her presence and barely stopped to glance in her direction as he bustled about the Machine Shop, welding something here, drilling something there, and generally attending to his many varied projects.

"So what if he yawns?" asked Harper when she asked. "Whoever made him, wanted him to mimic humans as much as possible."

"Yes, but that still doesn't explain the sleep."

"He could mimic sleep."

Rommie crossed her arms. "That's just the point. I don't believe he simply mimics it."

Harper crinkled his forehead. "Well, we when we first found him, he was in some sort of sleep state."

"Yes, but this is different. He wakes up and--"

"And what?"

"David has dreams. He tells me about them."

Harper stopped and pulled his goggles up to rest on his forehead. He looked sideways at Rommie. "Alright. I admit that it is a _little_ strange."

In her concern for David, Rommie pushed the awkwardness aside. She added, "He has nightmares too."

Harper turned and rummaged in one of his many toolboxes. "Rommie, are you still mad about…um, you know?"

Rommie watched Harper. She knew her engineer's many postures and this one spoke of true distress and regret.

Any last vestige of anger fled her at that moment. "No, Harper. I realize you were only trying to help. I forgive you."

Harper sighed with relief. "I suppose I might have come up with something a little better than the whole amnesia thing. If something like that happens again, next time, I'll try. I promise. So, are we still friends?" Harper stuck out a hand.

"Friends," Rommie agreed, shaking hands.

A smile lit Harper's face. He stood in place for a moment and started organizing his tool belt. "So this dream thing. It's weird. Maybe it has to do with the memory block. It's the way his mental systems are undoing it. Or trying to anyway."

"I see. You think his dreams are just repressed memories?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'll keep an open mind. You know, you can bring David by anytime and I'll run some tests. Nothing fancy. Try to figure out what's going on and check to be to sure he's alright."

Rommie nodded. "Thank you, Harper."

Shortly thereafter, Rommie had brought David by the Machine Shop.

David was fascinated by the curiosities that Harper was constructing. He asked endless questions and did not stop until Harper had agreed to let him help build one of Harper's projects. Harper showed David his designs and let David choose what he wanted to build. "I want to build this one," David decided, pointing it out.

Harper grinned. "You've got good taste, kid. This one's a beauty."

David's choice was Harper's latest ship in a bottle, a scale model of a Glorious Heritage class heavy cruiser, serial number XMC-10-182, the _Andromeda Ascendant_.

After the checkup, Harper pulled Rommie aside. "It'll take a little while to process the results of the tests, but so far there's nothing wrong with him."

"Nothing?"

It pained Harper to admit it. "Nothing I can find, Rom-doll. Doesn't mean there isn't something, but everything about the kid seems to be functioning just fine. Here, take this." Harper tossed her a handheld scanner. "Scan him twice a day, and send me the readings in the morning. Try to make one of them when he's sleeping. If anything drastic changes, we'll know it."

Rommie closed Peter Pan and put it aside. She picked up the scanner and passed it in front of David's face now, then put it back in its place on the shelf.

Her internal clock indicated it would soon be time to take her shift on Command Deck.

She decreased illumination levels, smoothed the bed covers around the sleeping boy, and rose quietly.

"Sweet dreams, David," she whispered.

----------------------

"Rommie," Rev's gruff voice called her name down the corridor. "I would speak with you. Do you have a moment?"

Her shift started soon, but there was still time. Rommie stopped walking and let him approach. "Yes."

The Magog had been a puzzle to her at first. This was the enemy that she and Dylan had fought against in so many battles. Past experiences with the race had been traumatic for her. The shrieking noises emitted by their hull-piercing swarm ships were enough to make even a mighty warship tremble with the knowledge of what damage and destruction were carried within.

Yet this Magog was a pacifist and Rommie found herself liking his presence more each passing day. Despite his monstrous appearance, his ideology managed to bring comfort to _Andromeda's_ crew. Rommie was no exception. She knew he measured a worthwhile life by its capacity to love.

"How is your young charge?" Bem inquired.

"His condition is stable for the moment," Rommie replied.

"Good to hear," Bem rasped. "And is he happy?"

Happy? So seldom did Rommie hear that term used in connection with an AI. "I hope he is."

"My reason for coming to you was simply to ask: What's next?"

Rommie blinked, confused by the question.

"I mean for David," Bem explained.

"David?"

"Yes, Andromeda." She noted his use of her full name here, and realized it was a sign of respect for her. He realized he was touching on a delicate subject. "I hoped to inquire what you are planning to do. I will leave soon for a short visit with a friend who may be able to help his situation. Or has Dylan agreed to make your current position as this boy's guardian permanent?"

Her brown eyes darkened. "No. I don't know what Dylan's planning to do."

"I see. Well, I must say it has been delightful having a child aboard. But perhaps another course is wiser. I suppose that now Dylan has completed his negotiations, he will want move ahead with his plans on finding a place for David?"

Not without asking, he wasn't, Rommie thought vehemently. The avatar wondered why Dylan had not spoken to her about his plans for David. She shook her head. "I want him to be well taken care of," said Rommie. "I don't want him to become someone's property."

"Of course not!" Bem replied, looking disgusted by the idea. His expression of disgust was rather horrifying, it displayed his fangs momentarily. Then, his features took on an aspect of calm. "I do have many good connections. During my trip I would be happy to inquire discreetly, for you, for a place for David."

"Hey, Rev?" Harper's voice came over a comm. "You ready to go?"

"I will join you shortly, Mister Harper." Bem looked back at Rommie. "I must go. So shall I make inquiries? I do not know when such a favorable opportunity will arise again."

"Yes." Rommie stared down the corridor. "Make them."

Bem waved a parting claw. "Good."

Good. Yes, it was good. It was also heartbreaking.

Rommie turned her feet towards the Command Deck.

She was going to be late.


	10. Part Ten

_**A/N: **I'm increasing the rating to T, simply because it meshes better with the content of the episode, All Too Human and the movie A.I. was rated PG13. Review replies will be done through the new feature. As always, angst warning._

**10**

Beka Valentine needed a break. Dylan had finally managed to rope her into doing those first officer duties she normally dodged. Honestly! What could possibly be gained by writing crew performance evaluation reports? Some things were better left to disappear with the old Commonwealth.

A cup of coffee and her favorite music playing turned the _Maru_ into a relaxing retreat from the everyday responsibilities of being _Andromeda's_ first officer. She had looked forward to the moment all day and quickened her step as she boarded her ship.

Beka entered the kitchen and eagerly reached for her favorite mug, then nearly knocked it off the counter.

Someone else was standing in the room.

She blinked, recognizing the figure. "Rommie! What are you doing in here? In the dark?" Beka activated the lights. "No wait! Don't tell me. You see great in the dark, so back to my original question."

Rommie's response was short. "I needed some time to think. By myself."

"Alright. No need to sound so defensive." Beka pointed to one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "Sit down. The _Maru's_ a great place to think. I only asked because, well, don't you usually think your problems over with yourself? The rest of _Andromeda_, I mean."

Rommie sat down in the chair. "I'm experiencing a bit of a system conflict."

Beka raised her eyebrows. The diplomatically-trained avatar often expressed herself in formal terms, but Beka knew how to translate. "You had a fight? With yourself? Want to talk about it?"

Rommie seized the invitation. "While running a routine diagnostic inside Mainframe, I came across an area and was denied access."

Beka couldn't help being curious. "Does that happen often?"

"I know which areas I have access to. Areas exist reserved for private information, but I am apprised of their classification and keep a regularly updated list. This one is new and I did not know of its existence. Until now." Rommie couldn't keep the anxiety from creeping into her voice. "It was hidden from me."

"I see," Beka replied with understanding. Rommie had good reason to be apprehensive about secret files in her matrix. Beka picked up her mug and filled it. "Harper gets back soon. Why don't you ask him to look into it for you?"

"I will." Rommie shook her head. "Why didn't I think of that?"

Beka leaned against the counter. "You've had a lot on your mind lately. Even if you can keep track of more than most, you can't expect to think of everything."

Rommie stood up. "Thank you, Beka."

"You're welcome, I guess. What exactly am I being thanked for?"

"For treating me like I'm somebody, like more than a warship."

"You _like_ being a warship."

"I do." Rommie elaborated. "You treat me as if what I feel makes a difference."

Beka took a sip from her mug. Ouch. Too hot. She set the mug back on the counter. "Who isn't? Is it Tyr? Because you know Nietzscheans, their personalities seem to suffer from that pesky superiority complex. I think it comes with the genes."

"No. I'm used to Tyr. He never treats me any differently than he would anyone else. I always know what to expect."

Beka grinned. "Yeah, you gotta hand it to Tyr. Everybody gets a neat handle from him." She settled her hands around her coffee mug and tapped the rim with one finger. She decided to launch the subject Rommie so obviously wished to skirt around. "So, it must be Dylan we're talking about?"

Rommie didn't answer.

"You haven't talked to Dylan, have you?"

"Dylan and I converse regularly," Rommie replied, stiffly.

Beka rolled her eyes and tapped the countertop. "But not about what's important to you."

Rommie appeared to think for a moment. "May I ask you a question, Beka?"

"Fire away," Beka replied, testing the temperature of the liquid in her cup by dipping one finger into it.

Rommie sighed. "What if I'm just an echo?"

"I don't follow." Beka took a long draught from her mug.

"What if my feelings are merely simulations, preprogrammed in those schematics Harper found written in the blueprints of my design. Presumably that's what Dylan meant."

Beka spat out her coffee. "Dylan gave you this idea?"

Rommie nodded. It was difficult to continue. "Yes," she confessed. "He said that's why Commonwealth ships have captains. He said he was my heart. It seems to suggest that he believes organics are the only ones who can feel true emotions."

Beka stepped over to Rommie, restraining the urge to shake some sense into her. "You have feelings, Rommie. Logic doesn't care. I know you do. If you were some emotions' simulator, we wouldn't be having this conversation! If you think something is important, no matter what it is, big or small, tell Dylan."

Rommie took a Commonwealth stance, standing straight with her hands behind her back. "I'm not denying my emotions, Beka. But Dylan is my captain. As long as his orders are rational, I follow them. That is my job. And if what I think--if what I feel interferes with the execution of those orders, then my feelings are irrelevant."

"Baloney!" Beka paced in a half circle about the room. "If I disagree with Dylan about something, believe me, he's going to hear about it. And as a captain myself, if there's something my crew feels uncomfortable with, I want to know what it is. So, tell me, what's bugging you right this minute?"

Rommie didn't have to think about this question at all. She dropped back into the chair. "I think Dylan wants to send David away."

Beka watched Rommie. "What do you want to do? You've helped the kid a lot. He wouldn't be here if it weren't for you and Harper."

"Is it enough?" Rommie asked. "You told me once when you've done all you can do, you let go. What if what Dylan wants to do is right?"

"If Dylan's so right, why does it bug you?"

Rommie remained silent for a long moment. "I don't know what to do!" she cried, pounding the table with her fist. "Only…I don't want to lose anyone. I've been running scenarios in my head and it seems, whatever I decide to do, someone gets hurt." Rommie looked distant. "Someone always gets hurt."

Beka narrowed her eyes. She wasn't going to pretend to try understanding that one. "Who gets hurt?"

Rommie shook her head and rose once more. "I can't talk about this now," she whispered and rapidly left the _Maru_.

Making decisions always presented difficulties for Rommie. So much responsibility rested on split-second judgment calls and people ended up getting hurt. Although she took every precaution, her measures never seemed to be enough. Why wasn't there something she could do to prevent that outcome? Why couldn't she think far enough ahead? React faster? Prevent anything from ever hurting the people that she loved?

It was not one of her proudest moments, in spite of the High Guard metal Dylan had awarded her. Victory cost a lot that day. She made a triumphant return to _Andromeda_ feeling anything but triumphant. "Kim died Dylan," Rommie would explain to her captain. "A lot of people died."

On her mission to Machen Alpha, she had been sent to contact and protect an informant who had vital information concerning a threat to the Commonwealth.

She would never forget the look of revulsion that had appeared on the face of Philip Kim when he had noticed the artificial parts sticking out from the burns the gauss guns had made in her clothes. The blasts had also done away with parts of her epidermal layer, making it impossible to hide the fact she was not quite human.

She had saved him from the people who had been sent to kill him. She had interposed herself between him and certain death and yet, once he realized she was an android, his first reaction had been: "Please don't kill me."

As if all she amounted to was a killing machine. A cold and unfeeling tool of destruction.

There wasn't a time so long ago when she had believed that herself. In the midst of pain and grief, she had once cried that she was a warship and warships were only good for one thing.

She no longer believed this, but that mission on Machen Alpha reminded her how much damage she could deal. One ship's avatar might hold an entire planet hostage. It was part of her Commonwealth design. Her blessing. Her curse.

Machen Alpha had a sordid past, one that was especially hostile to AIs. This served to make her mission very tricky. From the very start, things went wrong. Even after Rommie saved Kim's life, they were incessantly pursued by an Agent Carter and his team. Suffering from an aerial attack, Rev, Tyr, and Harper were sinking to the bottom of the sea inside the _Maru_. She lost communication with the ship and Mister Kim overheard her calls as she tried to reestablish contact.

He noted her concern. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing." There was no way she was telling a man who already thought she was a homicidal maniac that her mission had gone out of control.

Kim didn't buy it. "You're lying. That look on your face, it's almost…"

Rommie frowned. "Sorry. I must not be playing the cold, calculating AI well enough for you."

"No. You're acting human." Kim looked at her with awe.

"If I were acting human, we'd both be dead by now." Maybe humans did not realize it. Every time someone said she was acting human, the thought might also be construed as an insult. Like being herself, what she really was, wasn't good enough.

And in this instance, it was not. She was supposed to protect him and she failed. "I thought I told you to stay down," she chided Kim. She could already tell the shot he'd received was fatal. She sensed his life signs fading.

He simply smiled at her. "You think I'm going to listen to a--"

She thought she knew what he was going to say. "An AI?"

"A woman." Those were Kim's final words and Rommie would carry that memory with her forever.

He had called her a woman. The man who had thought her a merciless machine now saw her as a woman.

People could change their minds.

When Kim died, Rommie reacted. She declared war. Never did the weakness of humanity stand out as much as when she was in the act of destroying it.

She needed to break into a high-security facility to procure a Magog swarm ship. She immediately applied her mental processes to finding a way. "Estimated casualties: seven hundred thousand military and civilian. It could be a lot worse. Initiate reactor overload sequence." It wasn't too difficult to be the cold and calculating killing machine.

Agent Carter attempted to stop her, but linking with the planetary computer, she became the weapon. He barely slowed her down. "In case you're wondering," she informed him. I've tapped into your civilian network. It seems to be experiencing some technical difficulties. Oops. The main power grid for your largest city just went off-line. That was communications. There goes the civil defense system. Water treatment. Traffic control."

Her plan to breach the research facility ran like clockwork. Not one organic wanted to remain in the vicinity of an overloading reactor. Only one person stood in her way.

That persistent AI, Agent Carter. She was not happy to see him. "It's the wrong move. I'm taking that ship. Try and stop me, and I won't shut down the reactor. I'll turn this place into ground zero."

Carter studied her smugly. "No matter how many people it hurts?"

Rommie looked at her fellow AI. "It's what you'd do if you were in my position."

He didn't deny it. "Yes. And if I were in your position, right after the launch I'd turn that ship's PSP projectors on Machen Alpha and eliminate that potential threat forever. That's not going to happen."

"I gave you my best offer. You have seventy-three seconds to change my mind." If he wanted a fight, she'd give him one.

Carter accepted the challenge. "Seventy-three seconds, huh? Sounds about right."

Programmed to protect lives. Programmed to destroy them.

Destroy to protect. End lives to save them. That paradox had driven many AI's insane.

Carter's case was no different. He refused to see what a folly an alliance with the Magog would be for all concerned. The fighting ceased when he disarmed her. "It didn't have to be like this," Carter began ominously. Rommie did not reply right away, but ticked off the seconds to detonation in her head sadly. Sad because, under different circumstances, she had an inkling she would have really enjoyed getting to know Carter.

Her force lance exploded in his hands and there wasn't anything left of Carter to get to know.

"No. It didn't," Rommie responded. "Access reactor control. Initiate reactor shutdown. Authorization: _Andromeda Ascendant_, Alpha-Three-One-Five-Niner." The immediate obstacle to her mission had been eliminated and as inhospitable as Machen Alpha had been to her, she was not going to destroy it. There was no reason to hurt anyone else. She had learned a lesson Carter never would comprehend.

There was a great difference between being inhuman and being inhumane.


	11. Part 11

**11**

It hadn't taken him long at all.

In answer to the errand Rommie had permitted him to perform, the discreet Magog left an information packet for her to find. She perused the material thoroughly, then sought Bem out.

"I would like to know more," Rommie told him.

Bem nodded his head, eager to share. "Very well. I think I this may be the very place for him. In fact, it isn't too far out of the way. There is an agricultural planet that hosts an academic program for both human and AI children. I have already spoken with them and they would be happy to have David. It would simply be a matter of sending a communication to the academy. I told them, before any decision was made, you would want to see everything for yourself."

Rommie remained silent a moment. "Arrange it."

Bem assented. "Right away."

She began a correspondence from the information Bem had supplied her. She asked numerous questions, went on a virtual tour, and tirelessly interviewed anyone and everyone involved in the academy that had a moment to talk on the vid link. She poured over background checks, seasonal reports and informational brochures, researching the answers to questions everyone asked and also the ones that no one ever did.

In the end, it all boiled down to one simple phrase. "Nothing's wrong." Rommie sighed. "I can't find anything wrong with it."

"Sounds like you're looking," Bem observed.

"No! You did an excellent job, Rev. Thank you for that. I simply…wanted to be sure."

"Of course. Well, there is no need to rush into any decisions. I have not told Dylan about this recent development."

Rommie quirked an eyebrow. "You haven't?" she asked. Relief washed over her face.

"I can…."

"Please don't. Not yet."

"If David has remained with us for this long, what difference will an extra week or so make? Every thing gets told in its due time." Bem inclined his head. "I shall leave it to you."

----------------------

Rommie rarely broke her daily routine. She liked order and discipline. Her personal schedule had been altered and adjusted since David's arrival, but when performing her duties as ship's avatar, not much had changed. Therefore, it did not surprise her when Captain Hunt suddenly overtook her in the corridor. Dylan always seemed to know how to find her. For once, however, Rommie was not overly pleased with that fact.

"You were late."

She didn't ask what he was talking about. One cursory glance in her captain's direction and Rommie's photographic brain had recorded the fact that Dylan was holding a data flexi in his hand, displaying performance reports.

"Arriving late on occasion is not unusual," Rommie stated, matter-of-factly.

"For Harper or Trance, it's not." Dylan wagged a finger. "It is for you."

Rommie gave a nod, but kept walking. "Yes."

His voice sounded puzzled. "You're never late."

"Apparently not until now."

Dylan waited, Rommie didn't elaborate. "Care to share something with me?" he prompted.

Rommie appeared to think for a moment. "No."

"Because if there's something wrong, maybe I can help."

Rommie inclined her head in acknowledgement, but continued walking. "I appreciate that, but…no."

Dylan fell into step alongside her.

Rommie quickened her pace. She stared straight ahead. "You asked me if I wanted to share something with you. My answer remains the same."

Dylan stared at her, not quite certain about the prickly tone in her voice. He shook his head. "Why don't I believe you? I guess it's because you've seemed different lately, especially since you've been taking care of David. I must tell you, I've talked with him a bit and I don't know how you do it. With everything else on your plate, how do you handle having a little boy asking you all kinds of questions?" Dylan laughed, but then grew serious. "It must demand a lot of your time and attention. But of course, that's just a guess because you haven't really told me anything about it."

"You didn't seem interested."

"I am. I am very interested." Dylan quickened his own pace, until he was almost jogging beside her. "Whatever affects you affects the rest of _Andromeda_."

Rommie gritted her teeth. "I _know_."

Dylan rambled on obliviously. "Now, I know I don't have to explain to you how valuable _Andromeda_ is to the success of our mission."

Rommie slowed and turned towards him. "You will continue this mission, Dylan. I know you. With or without me."

Dylan lost his train of thought altogether. He frowned. "What are you talking about, Rommie?"

"Is that all I am?" Rommie burst. "An extension of your precious warship? A tool to restore the Commonwealth?"

Dylan looked flabbergasted. "No! I never said that! You're a lot more than that Rommie. I've told you this before, haven't I?"

"Have you? What does that mean, Dylan? If I said you were more, then what exactly would I be talking about? Would you know?"

Hardly able to make sense of this conversation, Dylan latched onto the one thing he knew with certainty. "I'm talking about rebuilding the Commonwealth, Rommie. We wouldn't be where we are today without you. What are you talking about?"

Rommie opened her mouth to speak and closed it again. She frowned and backed out of the conversation. "I don't know. Maybe I'm experiencing a malfunction. I'll ask Harper to check it out."

Dylan blinked. "Okay," he said with relief. "Good idea. Do that."

They headed in opposite directions down the corridor.

----------------------

It didn't take a genius to figure out someone was watching him.

Tyr caught a flash of movement as he lifted a barbell over his head. "Show yourself," he bellowed. Carefully, he eased the weights back down and into place, silently wondering who was intruding upon his exercise. Beka often spotted for him, but the captain of the _Maru _was engaged today in a myriad of chores Dylan had assigned her.

With the barbell secured, Tyr slid out and sat up. He laughed at the sight of the intruder he spotted emerging from behind a stack of mats. "Sprout, what brings you here? Has the ship employed you as her spy?"

David shook his head.

"Then to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? Who is supposed to be watching you, Sprout?"

"Nobody. I'm playing and exploring. What are you doing?"

Tyr pointed to the weights. "Exercise."

"Why isn't Captain Beka here?"

"What?" Tyr asked. "What makes you think she should be here?"

"She said no one should miss it when you exercise. Isn't she missing it?"

Tyr chuckled. "What other fascinating bits of information have you happened to store up?"

"Lots," replied David, companionably. "I learned how to play Hide'N'Seek and Basketball. And Rommie reads me stories."

"Stories of Earth and the Great Commonwealth, no doubt."

"One's about a boy who can fly and fights pirates."

"I know a few stories myself," Tyr began. "Some contain pirates."

"Really?" David moved over to Tyr eagerly. "Tell me!" Then, he amended, remembering how much Rommie emphasized politeness. "Tell me please!"

About fifteen minutes later, Rommie walked into the workout area. She was surprised to find the imposing Nietzschean and the little boy, sitting side by side. "David? I've been looking for you everywhere. How did you get here?"

"You showed me the way. From the tour."

"You mean the tour of _Andromeda_ I gave you? You remembered the way?"

"Yes." David looked up at her and smiled, unaware of the worry he'd caused. "I was hiding. I did a good job, didn't I?"

Tyr nodded. He smirked at Rommie. "Eluding the surveillance and sensor capabilities of a warship? Masterful."

"I didn't think to look here," said Rommie, apologetically. "Come on, David. Harper's expecting us."

David skipped over to her. "Mister Tyr told me a story. I think it was about you."

Rommie cocked her head in surprise. "Really?" She studied the Nietzschean. "Thank you for staying with him, Tyr."

"Thanks for the story," piped David. He waved to Tyr.

Tyr waved back. "My pleasure, Sprout," he said.

Rommie eyebrows arched higher than usual at that. She put a hand on David's shoulder and walked towards the door.

"He's a good storyteller," David continued as they left the room and walked out into the corridor.

"Well," said Rommie, grasping the amazing the fact that Tyr enjoyed David's company. "You'll have to tell me about it sometime."

"Guess what? Tyr knew pirates once. Like in Peter Pan."

"Imagine that," Rommie said, wondering how much Tyr had tweaked the stories he'd told David.

"Do you want to hear the story now?"

"Absolutely." With a fond smile, she guided the chattering David down the corridor.

He never did remember to look where he was going.


	12. Part 12

**A/N: **_My computer went on a little visit to the repair shop and came back like new. Don't panic. I did a data backup._:)

**12**

"I got some Intel that some suspicious items might be stored up in that beautiful matrix of yours so, open up and let me come in." Harper felt the jolt as he connected his portal to Mainframe. "Alright now," said Harper, strolling through the matrix and quickly locating the source of alarm. "Hey, Rommie's right. What is this?"

A giant-sized manifestation of Andromeda appeared over Harper. Her arms were crossed. "I am authorized to store that information and restrict access to it."

"Even Rommie?" Harper squeaked. "No wonder she was upset. She said you refused to give her any information about it." Staggered, Harper scanned the block of data. "Say this is a pretty big file. Hey, who authorized this?"

Andromeda shrank in size to Harper's level. "You did."

"I did? What?" Harper frowned. "Listen babe. I think I would remember something like this. No. Strike that! I know I would."

"My instructions were clear. When you were installing the precautionary memory block during the linkup, my avatar was too have no knowledge of it. I simply presumed any residual data related to that procedure would be restricted as well."

"Clearly a stretch. You made a mighty big presumption." Harper whistled. He magnified the data stream. "These are the kid's, aren't they? These are his memories."

"Copies," Andromeda corrected, guardedly. "Incomplete copies."

"You've had these all along and you didn't tell me? What are you doing with them?"

"I saved the data for further study."

Harper shook his head. "I didn't ask ya to do that. This stuff should have been deleted ages ago. Soon as my fix on the boy's head was over. So, why all the extra study?"

"It is my duty to analyze and monitor anything that could threaten the safety of the crew," Andromeda replied.

Harper jolted out of the matrix and disconnected his data port. He swapped in his diagnostic pad and began looking over the contents of the unauthorized stash. "Not cool," Harper chided. "Exactly what would you find so threatening about a little boy? You should be protecting him, not considering him as a threat. We've all seen him and he's perfectly harmless."

"Outer appearance does not matter. The child harbors the potential for destructive behavior."

"Don't we all? You know what I think. I think you're just plain jealous."

Andromeda scoffed. "Jealousy is a useless emotion. Something I try not to explore."

"You're telling me with Rommie spending all her free time with David, you're not feeling the least bit neglected?"

"Can we end this line of questioning? My chief concern is preventing anything from hampering our mission."

Harper frowned. "So, why else would you come up with an excuse to pirate David's memories? What are you looking for?"

"Instability."

"Lemme see this study of yours." Harper punched several buttons on a wall console and studied the resultant display. "Your analysis is flawed. Put anyone of us through these loops and we all come up a little crazy."

"His presence puts her risk. One day even my avatar will realize it."

"What are you worried about? It's not like she's going to--"

"Becoming overly attached is not a recommended course for--" Andromeda's eyes looked upwards, a gesture typical when she became aware of new information. "Interesting," she commented.

Harper lifted his eyebrows and curiously examined the information through his linked pad. "Aha," Harper said. "Does have potential. But this off-the-record project of yours has gotta stop."

"The captain may not share your opinion."

"I'm guessing, since I didn't know anything about this and I'm the one who," Harper wiggled his fingers, "authorized it, that Dylan doesn't have a clue either."

"Not yet."

Harper narrowed his eyes at the threat. "I'm not your enemy here, but whatever it is that's eating you up about this kid. Its gotta stop."

"I need to establish his background," Andromeda insisted. "He has been in contact with a species we know nothing about who may have tampered with him in a potentially harmful way."

"Scrap it! He's got no explosives or computer viruses or Trojan horses of any kind. I checked. You were there. You want to dig up some dirt on the kid, so he has to leave."

"The sooner he leaves, the better," Andromeda admitted. "For all concerned."

Harper clapped his hands once, punctuating his finding. "So I'm right."

Holo-Rommie joined them suddenly. "That is not entirely correct. We want to help."

"Help?" Harper shrugged. "Help with what?"

"We do not have to tell him," Andromeda argued.

Holo-Rommie shook her head. "I think we do. Harper would know the best way to implement such a procedure."

Andromeda made a face, but nodded. "Proceed."

Holo-Rommie continued. "You installed the memory block but the boy has yet to circumvent it. The memories are there, but David cannot access them."

"And you can?" Harper asked, incredulously. "I mean, I realize you've got a lot of them piled up here, but trying to transfer them wouldn't work because…"

"A transfer is unnecessary." Holo-Rommie spoke, looking at the main AI for approval. "As you know, I have finished the data reconstruction." She glanced back at Harper. "There may be another way."

Harper's mind was working over this news. "Even if you did reconstruct his memories into anything beyond garbled nonsense, being able to actually interpret them in any reasonable way would be--Hold on! You just said you found a way?" Harper perked up. "Okay. I'm listening. Show me."

"First, you kept some research of the alien technology from the ship where David was found?"

"Yeah," Harper replied, looking a little bit guilty. "You bet I kept some of it! Why should the Perseids get all the fun? You need it, huh? Andromeda, unlock private file: Little Green Men. Password: Harper Rocks!"

Holo-Rommie quickly added the new information, performing the new calculations in seconds. "My comparison is complete. With a few adjustments, I should be able to create a record with accurate chronology."

As Andromeda flashed their discovery up on a screen, Harper nodded eagerly. He rubbed his hands together, ready to get to work right away. However, one idea didn't quite pan out for him. "If you believe having the kid here is risky, how come you want to help him?"

"Once the boy is fully operational, my avatar's sense of responsibility for him may cease," Andromeda explained.

Harper sniffed, unconvinced. "Way to be optimistic."

"She has a duty to perform," Andromeda replied. "I have no doubt she will fulfill it."

Harper strapped on his goggles. "Then you've got nothing to worry about. Right?"

"I suppose not," Andromeda reluctantly admitted.

Holo-Rommie's eyes moved faster as she finished processing the data. "Displaying residual memory record file. On screen."

Harper watched as both images and sound replaced Andromeda on the screen. At first, the pictures seemed to be filled with static, but this quickly resolved into a scene. It was a house, somewhere on Earth.

One of David's memories.

_A pretty, dark-haired woman looked at David. She appeared nervous. "Now, I'm gonna read some words, and…uh...they won't make any sense, but I want you to listen to them anyway. And look at me all the time. Can you do that?"_

"_Yes, Monica," David replied._

_Monica didn't seem very reassured by this acquiescence. She studied the paper in her hands, and then proceeded. "Can you feel my hand on the back of your neck?_

_Again, David replied, "Yes."_

_Monica looked slightly panicked. "Does any of this hurt?_

"_No."_

_Monica seemed to gather herself. She lost her hesitation. "Okay. Now. Look at me? Ready? Cirrus. Socrates. Particle. Decibel. Hurricane. Dolphin. Tulip. Monica. David. Monica...All right…I wonder if I did that right. I don't-"_

_David looked at her. "What were those words for, Mommy?"_

_It was clear from the look on the woman's face that what she had done had worked indeed._

The static had been almost eliminated by the time they showed the copy to Rommie. "You kept me from knowing about this?" she asked with dismay.

"We're showing it to you now," Holo-Rommie replied, carefully watching the avatar.

Rommie paced back and forth, unable to pull her eyes away from the screen. "That woman," Rommie mused. "Sometimes David sees someone like her in his dreams. He didn't know who she was." She prompted the scene to play again. "What was that set of words?" she asked Harper. "Some kind of code?"

"He was built with an imprinting program," Harper explained. "It's hardwired into him and it can't be undone. But I found a loophole."

Rommie still was unsure about this idea. "How does it help him remember?"

"The memory block I did, somehow it worked because it blocked the imprint program. Stymied it, if you will. That's why he has trouble remembering anything before waking up on _Andromeda_. If we unblock the program, he'll remember everything."

"What did the imprint do to him?"

Harper stepped over to a console and pressed a button, pausing the playback. "You know about ducks, don't you?"

"Ducks?" Rommie asked. Strange as he often sounded, Rommie had learned not to dismiss any of the engineer's ideas, ridiculous as they might seem at first. Harper made his own kind of sense.

"Yeah, ducks. Chickens. Geese. See the fledglings peck their way out of their egg and snap. First thing they lay their eyes on, well that's Mama Duck. Now it may not look like a duck, walk like a duck, or even quack like a duck, but to them it's Mama Duck. And they'll follow their mama everywhere."

Rommie continued to look at the screen. "So, if you unblock the program, won't he miss her? He called her Mommy."

"Ay, there's the rub. But on the bright side, the imprint protocol was made for two. Monica only filled one slot. So, there's the loophole. I tinkered with the code in the program a bit. Didn't erase it, it's so much a part of his core that you can't do that without erasing him. I simply altered the output. I could go into a long explanation of how I did it, but I won't amaze you with the details of The Harper's genius. Here's the short version. David has options."

"What are the options?"

"Option A: Activate the imprint and leave the slot open. His original imprint carries on with him, but he won't be stuck on it. David will be free to choose who he loves. Option B: Fill the empty imprinting slot with somebody. As best as I can tell, the effect will be retroactive. He never will remember anyone else. His nightmares will stop." Harper picked up a familiar-looking device and showed it to her. "The new instructions will be delivered the same way I did the block. By remote. I'll press the magic button next time you bring David by the Machine Shop. After that, the rest is up to you. Nothing will happen until you say these words." Harper passed her a data flexi containing the particulars. "Andromeda and I both agreed that you should be the one to do it."

"I see. Thank you, Harper." She looked towards her main AI. "And as for the rest of David's memories."

"Being deleted as we speak." The face of _Andromeda's_ main AI blinked as she finished the process. "There."

As Rommie headed out into the corridor, her steps were leaden. The weight of David's future rested on her shoulders.

----------------------

With a simple string of words, she had the power to influence what David felt.

She could restore his memory. She had argued for this all along, yet she knew freeing his memories would come at a price. Restoring all the pain and sorrow he had experienced. Full knowledge that all the people he had known and loved were lost to him. It seemed a grim thought at first, but Rommie was forced to admit even the child's sad past could not be completely lacking in moments of wonderment and even joy. How else could he have become such an endearing little boy? Why else would David take delight in every game imaginable and never tire of reading a story? What would he be without his past? Certainly not the child she knew now.

She thought about what the Commonwealth had done to her. Expunging memories of her past. They did it to protect her, but the past eventually came back to haunt her. Yet, what would David do with full knowledge of the past? Would he look back on his life one day and grow bitter over the injustices he had suffered? Would he become a danger to others because he harbored painful memories? Would he come to hate his own existence?

With so many possibilities, Rommie had only one person in mind to speak with— _Andromeda_'s resident expert on possible futures.

Trance smiled at Rommie. "There are all sorts of possibilities. You just have to know what to look for. Do you see this plant?" Trance asked. "How does it look to you? Anything wrong with it?"

Rommie observed it. The plants leaves were a brilliant green and curled slightly at the edges. New buds emerged from waxy stems that reached towards the light. There was something very picturesque about the reaching stems. Trance Gemini certainly had the knack for imbuing her flora with a personality. "Thriving," Rommie replied with admiration.

"You would hardly believe that when I found in a shop on this backwater planet the _Maru_ had landed on. It was sitting in a shady corner and was the sickliest, most wilted and dry plant you ever did see. Beka only let me take it on the _Maru_ because I told her I'd keep it where guests wouldn't have to see it." Trance pointed to the shiny green leaves. "Look what a little care can do. Now it's healthy again and full of promise. I'm happy to have it. And even if it used to be ugly, I like it more than some of my most beautiful blossoms. I know how far it's come." Trance poked playfully at several of the leaves. "Guess it's true when they say, you know. About what you survive making you stronger." And suddenly, the Purple Girl remembered some pressing appointment, uttered an excuse, and dashed away. Intriguing how pressing appointments and excuses always seemed to be pop up whenever Trance Gemini inadvertently let slip something insightful.

Rommie caught the point, but remained undecided.

One string of words held a lifetime of possibilities.

There was another option open to her.

She could imprint him, completely overwriting his past. All that pain and sorrow he had experienced would simply be erased. His life on the _Andromeda_ would be the only thing he would ever know.

But then, he would never have the opportunity to know anything else and be happy without her.

How was it possible to want and dread the exact same thing? He should be happy without her. She wanted him to be. Almost.

Just not without her.


	13. Part 13

**13**

Rommie had always known she was postponing the inevitable, but somewhere along the way she had let herself hope differently. Since the confrontation with Dylan over her unusual tardiness, she had been exceptionally careful. She performed her routine duties during the day often exceeding the goals that had been set. Nothing was going to go wrong on her watch. She was not giving Dylan any reason or chance to renege on their arrangement.

As it turned out, he didn't have to.

As the New Commonwealth grew, so did the number of its enemies.

Exiting slipstream one day, the _Andromeda_ found itself ambushed.

The battle was intense, but short. _Andromeda _destroyed the forefront of the attacking ships then made a narrow escape to slipstream just as the enemy's reinforcements began arriving.

The crew was assessing the damage when they realized David was missing.

For several harrowing minutes, the longest Rommie had ever lived through, she spent the search imagining the terrible things that might have happened.

Then, she found him, curled up underneath the metal table in Med Bay, exactly as she had found him the first time.

He was whispering words to the floor and as she caught their meaning, she was disturbed by the chant more than anything else.

"_Keep me safe. Keep me safe. Keep me safe. Keep me--"_

This time he did not cry out in fear when she knelt beside the table. He simply raised his head.

"David, are you okay?"

His words spilled out quickly. "The ship shook. I fell. When I got up, I couldn't find you. I got scared." Tears sparkled in his eyes. Before Rommie could reply, David stared out at her accusingly. "I'm not supposed to be here, am I? Rommie?" A certain conviction in rang in his voice that she had not heard until now.

"What?" Rommie asked in surprise. "What do you mean?"

David stammered. "My…my Mommy didn't want me." Silent tears streamed down his cheeks. "I hurt Martin. I wasn't real. But I was sorry. So sorry. Martin was real. I thought if I was real my Mommy would want me. And then, they were all gone. Everyone. Dead. Even Martin. Even Mommy."

"Who is Martin?"

"Mommy's son. He was real."

"Your memories," Rommie replied with comprehension. "You're remembering the humans you lived with before."

David nodded, slowly. "Yes. All the orgas are gone. But not here. But they told me they were gone."

"Who told you, David?"

"The ones who found me."

Memory restoration, Rommie thought. That shock of the attack must have brought the return of some of David's memories. Maybe even all of them. If ever there was a moment to activate an imprinting to dispel anxiety and pain, this was that moment.

Rommie let it pass.

David hugged his knees, steadying himself. "I started to remember. All the humans were gone. Everyone. And I was afraid."

Rommie raised her eyebrows. "That's why you were afraid when you first saw Harper? The first time you were here?"

He latched onto her words. "The first time I was here. In this room. When I met you." David paused. He rubbed his fingers through his hair. His tears had ceased. "But Captain Dylan and Mister Harper are orgas. Human. Aren't they?"

"Yes." Rommie shifted, sliding completely down to sitting on the floor. Then, she asked, gently, "Why don't you come out?" She offered her hand.

David looked out at her uncertainly. "What about those things that made the ship shake?"

"It's safe," Rommie assured him.

"Mommy didn't want me because I wasn't real. She left me in the woods. By myself." The words fell from his lips as if admitting a terrible secret.

Rommie leaned closer and said, "You are real to me, David. More real than a thousand other boys." With her pointer finger, she lightly tapped the end of his nose. "Because I know you."

David's expression became one of awe. "You think I'm real?"

"Yes." Rommie nodded vigorously. "The one and only David who is real to me."

At this, David slipped his hand into hers and slid out from under the table. "I am David. They said I was the last," he mused. "All the humans were gone. But not here."

Rommie pulled him close to her, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. They sat together on the floor.

"Not all gone," Rommie replied. "You came from another Earth, a different dimension. Humans still exist in this universe. But your humans are not here."

"Like Mommy?"

"Yes."

David frowned. "Humans die Rommie. Will you die?"

"I'm not human, David. With the proper maintenance, AI's can live for an interminable number of years."

"And me?" questioned David.

Rommie smoothed the hair on his head. "The same goes for you."

David stared silently ahead. "But the orgas? They'll die one day, won't they? Like Mommy and Martin. And then you'll be alone. Like me."

It was a question she had pondered herself many times.

"You're not alone, David," Rommie said, hugging him tightly. "Don't be afraid. I'm with you. I'll keep you safe."

----------------------

"Rommie, we need to have a serious talk."

The avatar winced. She had known this moment was coming. "Yes, Dylan?"

"About David."

Rommie tried to speak the words calmly, but they refused to come out that way. In fact, her voice shook. "What about him?"

"After that last attack--" Dylan paused, pacing forward and then turning towards her once more. "Rommie, even you have to agree--"

Rommie couldn't keep silent, realizing what Dylan was about to say. "I kept up my end, everything has been running efficiently. David is doing well with the crew, even Tyr. Tyr gets along with him better than he does with most people. I've done everything you've asked. Everything."

"It doesn't make any difference, Rommie. _Andromeda_ is no place for a child. And after that last attack you don't presume that--"

"Dylan, I have no control over whether or not we get attacked."

"That is exactly my point, Rommie. Now, I've given you some leeway. A lot of leeway. But you need to decide what you are going to do. And decide it soon. You know what's best, don't you?" Dylan paused for a moment. "Children don't belong on warships. I know that you've grown attached to David, but I'm afraid that's affected your judgment. I'm sorry, Rommie. But you had to know from the start that this would never work." He must have noticed the stricken look on her face. He started to reach out to her.

Rommie stepped back as if he'd tried to set her on fire. "That's what you've always thought, isn't it! That I couldn't do this! Maybe you're right. I didn't know about bedtime stories or play clothes. He has nightmares and I don't know how to make them go away. How am I going to teach him things that I don't even know myself! What if I mess up? What if I turn him into a monster? I am a warship after all, aren't I? Congratulations, Dylan! You've succeeded in making me feel ten times worse." Her eyes darkened. Her expression hardened. "You said I have to decide what's best, but you've already made your decision. You want me to send David away into a universe notorious for its mistrust of AIs."

Dylan looked stunned. "There are places. I know some have been suggested to you. I'm ordering you to do something about this, Rommie. Or I will." Dylan turned away, but then turned back to her. "Believe me, Rommie, this isn't a request. It's necessary."

Necessary.

A word she had grown to detest.

Rommie's brown eyes glared at Dylan. "Then, you'll understand if I think some other things are also necessary."

----------------------

Beka didn't hesitate to give Dylan a piece of her mind. "If she goes Dylan, you're the reason. I just thought you should know that before you judged her too harshly."

Dylan laughed. "I just don't understand why everyone seems so intent on having a child on board a warship. Doesn't it seem a bit ludicrous to you, Beka? Am I so wrong?"

Beka crossed her arms. "Everything isn't always about you, Dylan! Even if it seems that way sometimes."

"I'm sorry. You said I'm the reason Rommie's leaving but it isn't about me? Did I get a wire crossed somewhere?"

"Don't you know that your opinion matters more to her than anybody's? It's because she--" Beka bit her tongue. This wasn't her secret to tell.

"She's what?" Dylan asked.

"She's your ship." Beka pointed at him. "And you're her captain. That means the responsibility falls on you."

Dylan frowned. "I think I've given Rommie a good idea of what my opinion is, Beka. I don't know how I could make myself any clearer. I don't quite understand why she wants to do this, but if that's what she wants to do, I'm not going to try and stop her."

"I give up." Beka sighed. "Tyr says your bright vision of the future blinds you to what is right in front of your eyes. And he's right."

"About what?" Dylan asked in irritation.

"You can be really dense sometimes."

----------------------

Rommie's counterparts were outraged with her decision.

"I know this is important to you," Holo-Rommie reasoned. "But some things are more important."

"You cannot be thinking about this clearly! What about the mission?" Her main AI's tone was accusatory. "Are you just going to give that up too? Don't fool yourself into thinking that it's for the best either. The universe isn't safe while the Magog and whoever's controlling them are still out there. Make up your mind: Are you a warship or a nanny?"

"I can make a difference," Rommie answered, continuing to pack.

"You weren't programmed for this," Holo-Rommie countered.

"Maybe I've exceeded my programming."

"You think you've grown better than us. Fine. Try living without us," said the main AI.

"But," the hologram started to say, then flickered out so suddenly that the android realized the hologram had been switched off.

The avatar turned to protest with the main AI, but the wall screen too, had darkened. Though she tried to summon the main AI's return, the screen remained dark.

She tried willing the doors to open, but nothing happened.

Rommie felt strangely free and strangely empty at the same time. She shook her head, unable to reestablish a link. She shivered, but not from cold.

Her connection with Mainframe had been severed.


	14. Part 14

**14**

It felt like the dreams she had heard described.

She felt off kilter. Distracted. Disorientated.

What was happening seemed like a hazy and unreal image that would melt out of existence with the passage of time.

But she was out of time.

Rommie walked over to her nightstand and retrieved David's daily scanner. Her hands hesitated over the photographs. She picked up the photo of Dylan, held it wistfully, and then set it back in place again.

Leave it, she thought. The image of her captain was etched indelibly in her mind already.

There was no need for reminders. In the end, she left all of the photos on her nightstand. These effects belonged to a part of her life that had closed.

The rest of her things were packed in little time at all. It had taken much longer to pack David's belongings. Curious, she thought, how David could have accumulated so much in the short time he'd been aboard _Andromeda_. She had not packed half as much for herself. After one final survey, Rommie pulled the straps of her bag taut, letting them diagonally cross her, with the bag balanced next to her hip. Her hands remained free.

She a pressed button on the wall, manually dimming the lights, and the action felt alien to her. The strangeness swallowed and permeated the entire room as the door slid open and suddenly, Rommie was only a visitor there, trespassing in a place that no longer held any meaning.

She could not escape into the corridor quickly enough.

Dylan was waiting to escort her down the hall. "Before you leave, I wanted to talk with you. Okay?"

Rommie didn't particularly want to talk to Dylan. Goodbyes would be hard enough. She would rather slip away quietly, not actively aware of any disapproval or pleas to stay. Her job was done. She would no longer be reminding the crew of proper protocol during public functions. Who knew? The crew might be glad to be rid of her. Her mainframe certainly seemed to be taking that route.

Dylan took her silence as an assent and launched into a speech.

Dylan liked his speeches. She remembered a time when she used to hang onto every word, even repeating his sayings for the benefit of others. How much had changed!

Given her current state of mind, if she'd been human, his words would have flown right over her head and, once quizzed about them later, she would have been left with no idea of what he had said. Not being human, Rommie nodded, flipping on a generally passive auditory sensor and directed it at Dylan's words, recording them to consider later, lost in her own private thoughts.

She couldn't help thinking as she walked that this might be the last time she would see her halls and enjoy the feeling of pressurized atmosphere. Air she prided herself on keeping delightfully breathable. She'd carefully set the ventilation filters to free it of allergens, dusts, and odors. Yet, she refrained from a completely sterile environment. She allowed pleasing scents, like the fragrance of Trance's plants, the rubber of Dylan's basketball, and the aroma of Beka's coffee to remain until they naturally dissipated. These were things her mainframe would have simply dismissed without another thought. Who would do that now? Who would keep that balance?

She expected to make her farewells quietly, but as they entered the hall leading to the exit to Hangar Bay, she suddenly became aware of rest of the crew. The members were gathered in a line, dressed in their very best. Harper stepped forward and held out a brightly-wrapped gift box.

Rommie took the present and looked around in shock.

For the first time, Rommie noted Dylan was wearing his white dress uniform. He cleared his throat. "Rommie, you're a very important member of this crew. Now, in all the struggles for survival in a universe of chaos maybe I haven't remembered to say thank you enough. If that is the case, I am eternally sorry."

Rommie was unused to surprises. How had this gone on right under her sensors? She should have detected the waiting crew before turning the corner--only she no longer was able to link to those sensors. She felt with a pang the loss of her connection to Mainframe. A thousand times a day she was reminded that she had been shut out ever since her decision to leave. And, after that last argument, her hologram too, had grown distant.

Whether Dylan had sanctioned this treatment or knew of it and yet did nothing, was a question Rommie was unwilling to ask. She feared what the answer would be.

She had not even approached Harper about the forced disconnect. It was a bizarre feeling. If Rommie could have voiced it in words, she might have described it as losing sight in one eye, hearing in one ear, and your dominant hand going numb. At first, she had fought to regain her former status, hoping if she concentrated hard enough, she could still control nearby ship's systems, but her efforts were clumsy at best and burned energy that drained her own power supply.

She should have quickly learned to leave well enough alone, but sheer habit prevented that solace. She was leaving, so why should it bother her so much?

Rommie felt her tear ducts starting to sting and quickly reined in her emotions. She rarely cried. _Pax_ had obsessed over the mathematics of tears, but Rommie knew from her studies on human emotions that tears, real tears, occurred spontaneously. And that kind of spontaneity frightened her.

"So, this is really happening?" Harper asked. "You're really going?"

"Yes," Rommie replied. There it was. Her choice.

Harper's mouth twisted into a grin that disappeared just as quickly. "Trance suggested giving you a plant, but that idea got nipped in the bud." He nodded swiftly and gestured towards the gift. "It's a little something from all of us."

"Shall I open it?" Rommie asked.

"Nah," replied Harper. "It's for later. Parting gift, you know." Harper stuck his hands in his pockets. "So, are your battery modifications working okay?"

Rommie ran a swift self-diagnostic. "Fully operational," she assured him. "Thanks."

"Good. Keep track of those power levels. If you notice any odd dips or spikes, you can…Well, I won't be able to check them, but someone should. Yeah. So whoever that somebody else is, you know. Tell them to check."

The edges of Rommie's mouth turned upwards as she listened to the spiky-haired engineer while he rambled. She smiled softly. "I will."

"Good." Harper nervously shifted on his feet. "So, I guess you're really going," he repeated, almost as if he needed to say the words to believe them. He laughed half-heartedly. "Well, this isn't the first time a woman's ever left me."

Rommie leaned forward and kissed Harper's forehead. She cupped her hands over his ears and shook his head gently. "Try and stay out of trouble."

Harper nodded and sniffed. "Yeah," was the only word he could choke out.

Mercifully, she moved on down the line.

The Nietzschean was next.

Tyr looked at her, stolidly. "Live well. Strive hard. Survive."

"Thank you, Tyr."

Beka offered an encouraging smile. "I think I said it all before. Things won't be the same around here without you. If you tire of being a mud foot, you know who to call. Words of advice: Stay out of the rain and beware of Nightsiders bearing gifts. And seriously, no that's pretty serious. Take care of the kid."

The _Maru_ was to be her designated ride planetside. Rev Bem would accompany Rommie and David, seeing to it that they were installed safely at the academy. The Magog was the only one given that luxury, a member of the growing Commonwealth had recently petitioned for a matter requiring the _Andromeda_'s presence and Dylan claimed no one else could be spared even a short shore leave.

Trance ran up to Rommie and hugged her. She stepped back and looked at Rommie knowledgeably. "Look beyond what seems to be, Rommie. There's more there than you'll ever know."

Beka raised an eyebrow at that and said, "This has been Trance's riddle of the day."

Farewells having been said, Dylan was the only one who accompanied them into the hangar.

Rommie turned to the waiting Magog. "I'm ready to go now."

Bem nodded. "I'll go prep for launch," he said, scurried across the deck, and disappeared inside the _Eureka_ _Maru_.

An awkward silence threatened to fall.

Dylan caught it. "You asked me what I meant when I said you're more. I thought about it and I meant _you are more_. You are more than a program or a machine. You've grown. You've changed. And whatever you are now, you have the potential to grow even more. Yes, you're going to make mistakes, we all do. But you'll learn from them, just like the rest of us."

Rommie stopped in her tracks. She had heard enough diplomatic speeches delivered by her captain to realize something was off. "Whatever I am now?" Rommie asked. "What am I now?"

Dylan gaped at her. He paused for a moment and then said, "You're also my friend."

The frown came of its own accord. The answer felt evasive and it annoyed her. "Up until now, I was your ship too. Things change."

"What I'm trying to say is: As your friend, I wish you success in whatever you decide to do, now and in the future."

His words sounded hollow to her ears. She perceived something else entirely. "But you think this is a mistake."

Dylan's eyebrows flew up. "What? I didn't say that, Rommie."

"You know I can detect a lie better than anyone. So, tell me, do you think this is a mistake?"

There was the slightest edge in his voice. "I'm not going to lie to you, Rommie. I've told you my thoughts on this, but since that doesn't seem to matter to you, here we are."

"It always matters what you think. I thought you would know that by now."

The purr of the _Maru_'s engines filled the bay.

"Fine," Dylan huffed. He dropped his civil tone. "Here's what I think: If this is what you really want, to desert everything we've worked to achieve then go."

She didn't want to leave him so angry. "Dylan, I'm not--"

"Go!" Dylan folded his arms, turning away coldly. "Just go." He strode away, never once stopping to look back to see if she would comply. And then, he was gone.

Behind her, the _Maru_'s engines roared.

Time was up.

Speechless, Rommie turned and entered the _Maru_. Her steps driven onwards by a single thought.

David awaited her.


	15. Part 15

**A/N: **Here's an update for those many of you who keep checking this story. Thanks so much.

**15**

It was cold.

And lumpy.

Beka gave up on her hot cereal and dropped her spoon into the bowl.

"Is something wrong?" Tyr asked, walking towards her table in the galley.

"You bet," Beka replied, shoving her cup of coffee towards him. "Taste this."

Tyr frowned at her. The Beka Valentine he knew never willingly shared her cup of coffee. He studied the cup with suspicion. "I'd rather not." Even now, Tyr's nostrils flared as the smell reached him. The brown concoction looked more like a watery broth than a brew.

"It's all like this," Beka said, showing him her cereal spoon and watching as the lumpy bits fell back towards the bowl. She eyed the plate of bacon Tyr was setting in front of himself. "Wouldn't eat that if I were you." Beka stood up. "Something's off."

"To think the Commonwealth thought they were doing us a favor endowing machines with emotions. Hopefully, this irrational reaction will pass in a few days."

"You think so?"

"Although, I cannot help but question the wisdom of following the leadership of a captain whose own ship abandons him." Not heeding Beka's advice, he took a bite of bacon. He grimaced, started to reach for Beka's coffee and decided against it. Two glasses of water later, he finally began to think there was some hope the rancid taste would fade.

Beka watched his struggle with faint amusement then picked up the threads of their conversation. She retrieved some items she'd left at the corner of the table and returned to sit across from Tyr. "Well, Trance thinks this is the natural result of Rommie's leaving--I think it's something else. Look at these."

Tyr raised his eyebrows as he examined the two data pads. "You did evaluations? Without the captain forcing you too? What have you done with the real Captain Valentine?"

"Okay," Beka admitted. "So I had Harper do the last ones. But the first are mine. As you can see, almost all performance ratings have dropped. Response times are lagging. Ship comms are becoming unreliable. There are odd fluctuations across the board. The _Eureka Maru_ could probably beat _Andromeda_ in a short distance race right now. If she were here." And I'd be able to have a decent breakfast, Beka added silently.

"If you're trying to reassure me, you're failing miserably."

Beka snapped herself back from wishful thinking. "My point is, in a little over a week, we'll be heading off on one of Dylan's famous peacekeeping missions and you know how those always end up."

"We get shot at," Tyr said. He rubbed a hand across his forehead as he looked again at Beka's findings. "What do you think is the cause?"

"Well, Dylan has a lot of enemies who haven't quite learned the lesson that shooting at Dylan never stops--"

"No," Tyr replied, waving a data pad. "The cause of all of this?"

"Ah, that's Harper's department."

"So what did our Little Professor say?"

"He needed more time to figure it out."

Tyr nearly groaned upon hearing this information. When their resident genius needed more time, it meant the problem he was working on was very big indeed. "I suppose you want me to inform Dylan something is seriously wrong with his ship and in all likelihood he will need to change his plans."

"No."

"No?"

"Since when does Dylan listen to you?" Beka consulted the time. "Harper's telling him."

Tyr raised an eyebrow. "Harper?"

"Yeah." Beka picked up her bowl and cup, handling them like they were toxic waste.

"And hopefully our engineer will find out what's going on." She dumped her bowl into the recycler. Her cup followed suit. "Before we all starve."

----------------------

"Mind if I step in?" The words issued from a woman wearing a ponytail and a bright blue shirt, she stood on the doorstep with such self-assurance and an air of belonging to the place that for a split second Rommie did not respond to the stranger's request.

"Why?" she managed to muster a reply, but the response still puzzled her.

"Why not?" The woman smiled at her. "I'll just wait until you get ready. Unless you're ready now?"

Rommie arched her eyebrows. "No. Should I be ready?"

"Oh, I suppose it's still early. I like to start tours early. Would it be possible to start now? Or I could give you more time. How much do you need?"

"Oh," Rommie replied, positive that no amount of extra time offered would help this baffling conversation. "I've already taken a tour."

"Most people do. I only thought you might want to see it in person. The VR tours are great, but you can't taste the food or smell the flowers. But then again, you probably don't eat. Do you like flowers?"

"Yes," Rommie replied, mechanically.

"Well, if you decide to come. I think it's only fair to warn you: I was on the list."

"The list?" asked Rommie.

"Yes, you know, the list. I was an applicant."

"Are you sure you have the right door?"

"They didn't tell you?" Julie glanced at the address above the door. "No, this is right. I was told to find you here. If I'm not mistaken, you are Andromeda? Correct?"

"Yes."

"Yes, you're the one who was planning to send David here. So he could have a good home. I was the one who was hoping to-- But, I've confused you. Pardon me. Let's start over. With introductions. Hello, I'm Julie Wells."

"Julie Wells," Rommie repeated, recalling information. "You're one of the art teachers here. I'm Rommie."

"Rommie? Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Rommie."

They shook hands.

Julie smiled. "Now, where's David? I promised my son he could meet David. Calvin's very excited about it. If that's okay?" Julie waved an arm and a boy about David's size came trotting forward. His green eyes looked hopefully up at Rommie.

"Upstairs," Rommie replied.

Watching Calvin and David play together was a delight.

----------------------

Rommie had conducted many interviews with people associated with the Academy. Now, it appeared she would be on the other side of the table.

Nora Isaacs, the co-founder of the Academy had urgently requested her presence and a summons from such a woman was not to be taken lightly.

Rommie hurried. If this lady did not like her, she might not be allowed to stay.

As she approached the antiquated double doors that led to the respected dowager's domain, her pace slowed. She could not seem to dispel her own apprehension.

"Where's your ID?" The question was unexpected. She froze in her tracks and looked in dismay at her questioner.

"I wasn't aware I needed any--" Rommie began.

"Then, you can't come in here. I'll have to run an ID check. You are not in my registered database. Who are you?"

Rommie studied the man before her. He was slightly taller than her with light brown hair that came down to his ears. His eyes were steel grey and piercing. He spoke with authority.

No heartbeat detectable.

An AI.

Rommie replied, impatiently, "I was asked to come here."

"You are not in my database."

"Find another database!" Rommie insisted.

"I can hear you clear across the courtyard," Julie said, running over. "Mind if I intrude?"

"Be my guest," Rommie said, in no mood for a logic battle today.

Julie shook her head. "Austin, this is Andromeda. Ah, Rommie. She has a right to be here. Rommie, this is Austin. He handles security around here."

Rommie examined Austin. His glare aimed in her direction did not disappear with the introductions. He wore black and brown.

"You must forgive Austin," Julie apologized. "He takes his job very seriously."

"She should have shown her ID straightaway," Austin countered.

A good-natured smile leapt to Julie's lips. "You must have her picture stored somewhere, activate your facial recognition program and be done with it."

"Faces can be forged."

"Of course," Julie agreed. "And your programming's good enough to recognize a forgery when you see one, isn't it?"

"My programming is impeccable."

"In that case, use it and quit picking on her."

Austin finally stopped glaring. He blinked, then acknowledged. "You pass inspection."

"I spoke with a lot of people when I was thinking of sending David here. Why didn't I speak with you?" Rommie asked Austin, curiously.

Julie answered for him. "Oh, that's simple. Austin refuses to talk to tourists or do interviews of any kind."

"I choose not to engage in unnecessary wastes of my time," Austin replied.

"On that note: Are there any other problems?" Rommie said. "Or may I be on my way?"

Austin suddenly turned chatty. "Your profile says you're an avatar. What main purpose were you programmed for?"

"Isn't it in my records?" Rommie asked.

"Yes," Austin replied. "But I'd prefer to hear how _you_ characterize yourself."

"I'm a warship," Rommie replied.

"Are you now? Interesting." Austin pondered, studying her face. "Then, are certain you've come to the right place? For you?"

"I came for David."

"You have yet to meet Nora, have you?"

"Not yet."

"She'll want to see you."

Rommie nodded. "She already does! Now, if you'll excuse me?"

"One last word of advice, Andromeda: Don't draw attention to yourself and I think we'll get along just fine." Austin stood aside.

The words nettled Rommie, but she didn't have time to reflect upon them.

With the path clear, Rommie rushed towards her appointment. An assistant, sitting at a desk outside the doors, smiled and waved her forward.

Rommie plunged at the doors, pressing against the heavy wood panels. Their hinges were apparently well-oiled, hardly making a sound as the doors swung open, admitting her into the presence of the lady herself.

Rommie stopped just inside the threshold

Eyes, dark and shrewd, appraised her. Intelligence swum in their depths and the rest of the features of the wrinkled face paled in comparison.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Rommie stood under that appraising gaze, wondering what that probing look was trying to see in her.

The important lady pressed a strand of stray hair into place. Once upon a time, the hair must have been a vibrant red, but no longer. Fingers tapped a desktop and pointed to a chair. "Miss Andromeda, please sit, we have important matters to discuss."

Rommie took the seat offered and waited.

"Now, what do you wish to accomplish here? What do you want?"

"I want what's best for David."

"I understand that already. But I want to know: What do you want for yourself?"

Rommie replied, slowly. "I want people to know me for who I am."

"You have lived your entire life in outer space, exploring the galaxy, learning about alien cultures, seeing things most people only dream of. Do you think you can give that up and be happy here?" The dowager raised her hand to stop Rommie from speaking. "Do not answer that question now. Later, yes, I will expect to hear from you."

"What do you want from me?" Rommie asked.

"Answer my question. Who are you?" Nora asked. "Tell me who you are and what you want."

_Who are you?_ It was a very strange question to be asked. Rommie almost answered that Nora should already ready know who she was, but instead she remained silent. Was she undergoing some kind of test?

"I want to know why you are here, my dear. When you first contacted us about this charming little boy, you did not mean to come here yourself. I see your plans have changed and I think have a right to know why this is the case."

"I had to come," Rommie replied, wondering why she could not think of any other response.

"What brought you here? What are you looking for?"

"I don't know," Rommie admitted.

"If you don't know who you are, how can you expect anyone else to?" Once again, Nora did not wait for an answer. "You are the only one who can truly know yourself. And once you know who you are, then you can decide where you are going. Then, you will know what you want."

"I'm sorry. I don't understand," Rommie apologized.

"That is an honest answer. Not a very satisfying one, but an answer. So, I suggest that is the reason you are here. Go." Nora waved a hand, dismissing her. "Find out the answer. The one you understand."

On this cryptic note of dismissal, Rommie rose. She seriously considered that this eccentric lady might be playing with her head, but she didn't know for sure. If this was truly a test, the solution must exist and Rommie was determined to find it.

----------------------

"That, Dylan, is the cause," Harper finished explaining, "of all our recent problems."

Dylan peered at Harper's scrolling report. "How long has it been there?"

"A long time."

"Then, why didn't we ever notice it before?"

"It seems to be waiting."

"Waiting?" Dylan asked. "Waiting for what?"

"Oh, I don't know. For someone to fire on us so it can drop the shields at just the right moment. For us to power up slipstream, so it can disrupt the stream at the worst possible moment. To overload a conduit just when somebody happens to be standing too close to it. Maybe all of the above. Something like this waits for an opportunity, and then exploits it."

"Then, how do we stop it?"

"We don't," Harper said.

"Okay," said Dylan, grinning at Harper's sense of humor. "How do you stop it?"

"That's just it, boss. I don't. Not without help."

"Whatever you need."

Harper squinted. "I don't know, boss. You're not gonna like what I have to stay."

"Tell me what we need to do fix this, Mister Harper!"

Harper coughed. "Rommie."

"What?"

"It's a highly adaptable program and no systematic sweep is going to catch it. The main AI isn't human enough to fix this problem, and we're not inhuman enough to stop it ourselves. I already tried jacking in but this renegade program is too fast. Even for me to catch. Besides, when I was jacked in it was kind of like a tomb. Dark, creepy, and silent. I'm not gonna try that again."

"Rommie's gone only a few days and you're telling me this problem only can be solved by my ship's avatar?"

"Former," Harper coughed. "Your former ship's avatar."

"That's it?" Dylan asked. "There are no alternatives you can think of?"

"Yep, that's it," Harper replied. "Unless you want to take your shot inside the matrix against a foreign entity that will ultimately be more powerful than you and mop the slipstream core with ya, yeah, that's it."

Dylan stood very still for a moment. "_Andromeda,_ send a communication to Rommie."

"Uh, boss," Harper reminded him.

"Oh, right." Dylan blew out an annoyed puff of air. "Long range communication still off…"

"Yeah."

"Relay a message through whatever network of ships' communications you have to. Contact Rev when he gets back to the _Maru_."

"Will do, boss," said Harper.


	16. Part 16

**A/N**: There were a few minor storyline points I cut which would have developed my original characters a bit more, but these seemed to cause writer's block and hopefully this story works without the extra chapter before this last one. So please, enjoy the story and hooray, it's finished.

**16**

Rommie wasn't quite sure about this summons. The building that housed Nora's office was located in the center of the park, not far from the game field.

Nora remained seated at a huge desk when Rommie arrived. Austin stood next to the desk, like some kind of sentry.

"What do you think of us?"

"I admire what you are doing here."

"As much as some are loathe to admit it, all of us are links in the same chain. We do our best to promote harmony," Nora explained. "There's no need for man vs. machines arguments."

Austin spoke. "Would living beings be able to travel through the space without the help of machines?"

Nora replied, obviously this was a question she had answered many times. "Would the machines that travel space have ever been built without their need for them? We are dependent on one another. It is good to be independent, but everyone must depend on someone. We teach them how to live, how what they do and how they live affects others. Hopefully, their actions will cause a change for the better."

Rommie listened with rapt attention. "You teach them that they can make a difference."

Nora nodded. "Exactly. Big or small, human or AI, we're all important."

Austin gave Rommie a cold glare. "Some make themselves more important than others."

"Stop being so negative," Nora replied.

"You haven't told her yet, have you?" asked Austin.

"I was about to." Nora shrugged at Rommie, apologetically. "If you wish to stay here, your vast knowledge will be welcome and a special asset to our students. However, we would ask a favor of you."

"We must insist upon it," Austin emphasized, forcefully. "You cannot go by your name here."

"I?" Rommie blinked. "What?"

Austin continued. "Your identity is a threat. We don't want to draw any extra attention to ourselves. Your known presence here would make that impossible."

"Isn't my presence already known?" Rommie asked.

"That knowledge can be contained," Austin replied. "If you will cooperate."

"She doesn't have to do this if she doesn't want to," Nora replied. "What do you want, dear?"

The innocent words brought to mind their first conversation. It was almost as if Nora's question had resurfaced and hung in the air once more.

_Who are you?_

"Why would she refuse?" asked Austin, obliviously. He turned and looked earnestly at Rommie. "If you are recognized and it becomes known to your enemies you are here, you put the entire academy at risk. You put the children at risk. We have enough people opposed to what we're doing here as it is without giving them a target worth shooting at. To some liberated AI's is simply a dirty word."

And no orbiting _Andromeda_ to shoot back at them, Rommie thought. "I am aware of the universal situation," Rommie began.

"We have our very best engineer working on it. Rommie, as we know her, disappears. You can alter your appearance, change your hair color and your eyes," suggested Austin, holding up several photographs for her to study. He tapped a sample with one finger, pointing out choices. "Blue, I think. Or you might prefer green."

"Blue hair?" asked Rommie, struck by the idea.

"I meant your eyes," Austin corrected.

"Only what you consent to," Nora added. She pulled an ident card from the drawer in her desk and passed it to Rommie. "As for a new identity, what do you think of the name Samantha Sommers?"

Rommie dropped the card as if it had bitten her. _Not be Rommie?_ Too much. Too fast. _I don't belong here._ _"No!" _Rommie felt surprise snaking through her. The walls of the office were closing in on her. To spend her life here, pretending to be something she was not, living in fear of being discovered. Endangering lives she had once possessed the power to protect. "No. I'm sorry! I can't do this, I thought I could, but I can't. I have to go," she said and ran for the door.

David was playing ball with some of the boys outside.

Rommie consulted her internal clock. There was still time. "David," she called. Her voice shook unsteadily. "We have to go."

"Go?" asked David, reluctant to leave his playmates, especially with Calvin among them. "Where?"

"We're going back," Rommie replied. She stepped swiftly to his side and took his hand. "Walk fast."

"Back to _Andromeda_? For good?" David did his best to keep up with her stride. His blue eyes widened. "My bag's still in my room!"

"We'll send for it," Rommie replied, decidedly.

David's voice piped up once more. "I need to say goodbye to Calvin. He'll miss me."

"There's no time," Rommie said shortly. She harbored no hopes of catching up with Bem, who most certainly was back aboard with the _Maru_ by now. Still, _Andromeda_ would need supplies before leaving the system. Maybe they would catch a departing transport and catch up in time. Perhaps if Harper decided to run a structural integrity check, she should have reminded him to, especially after the way her hull had been bombarded in that last attack.

The attack! She had nearly forgotten it amidst everything else.

Rommie stopped in her tracks. Her haste evaporated.

David skidded to a halt. "What's the matter, Rommie?"

"What did you think of everyone? Calvin? Julie?" Rommie asked, tentatively. "You liked them?"

David nodded. A smile spread across his face. "Yes. Oh yes, and I think they like me."

"These people…Nora Isaacs and the others. I've studied them thoroughly. They are exceptional. They'll be able to do a lot for you." Rommie paused. She sighed and then continued sadly. "More than I can." She looked down at David. She gently squeezed his hand. "Do you remember when I first met you? I made you a promise."

David looked up at her, studying her face. "We're not going back to _Andromeda_, are we?" he asked.

Rommie knelt so the two could see eye to eye. "That is not entirely correct. I am going back, you're staying here."

"Why?"

"There is nothing I would like better than for you to continue to live with me. But I promised that I would keep you safe. The _Andromeda_ is a target. That means so am I. I have a mission to complete. As long as you're with me, I cannot guarantee your safety. Do you understand, David?"

A very small voice answered her. "I must stay here."

Rommie nodded.

David gazed up at her. "And you must go." His lower lip trembled.

He threw his arms around her neck and she lifted him into the air and held him in her arms for a moment, hugging him close.

"Stay safe for me, Rommie," David whispered into her ear.

Rommie nodded her head and lowered him back to the ground, not trusting herself to speak. She ran her fingers through his hair, memorizing the strands, then let go.

Let go.

Rommie couldn't stop the rush of perceptions that flooded her high-speed brain. One rose above the rest.

_There may come a time when you've done all you can do, and you just gotta let go. _

Only one thing was left to do.

"David," Rommie said, following the instructions Harper had given her. "Listen." She read the string of code words, but with one addition. "Choice. David's choice."

David's blue eyes stared into space for a moment. A soft whirring noise issued from within the child and then, all was quiet again. The processing lapse ended that quickly and David was fully himself once more.

David looked at her with a thoughtful frown on his face. "I think you are her," he whispered.

"What?" Rommie asked in confusion.

David nodded. "Yes, you _are_ her," he said with conviction.

Rommie verged on panic. "Who, David?"

"The Blue Fairy," David answered. His blue eyes sparkled. "You're my Blue Fairy."

Rommie sighed with relief. She pulled David close to her and said, "For you, I will be. Always. I must go now."

His eyes fixed on her face, unaware of the gift he had just been given. "Stay safe, Rommie," David repeated. He smiled up at her.

The sudden and wonderful smile that flashed her way as he bravely accepted what was about to happen, almost undid her.

Before he could see the revealing mist in her eyes, Rommie covered them with her hands, composed herself, then stepped away.

She didn't say goodbye.

David looked after her. Rommie stepped backwards headed towards the docking port yet striving to keep him in sight for another moment. Words of an earlier conversation they had shared flashed through his mind.

_Humans die Rommie. Will you die?_

_With the proper maintenance, AI's can live for an interminable number of years._

There was dip in the landscape and Rommie turned at last and vanished from his sight.

David whispered his words into the wind. "Stay safe until you come back."

She must have been following them from a distance and watching all that occurred, for moments later, Julie came up beside David and stood with him in silent understanding. Then, she patted his shoulders and turned him back towards academy grounds. "Calvin's waiting for us," Julie said. "Let's go home."

----------------------

"Dylan, a passenger's requesting to come aboard!"

These words were even more astounding to hear, for though Bem had been contacted, he had relayed a message back to them that Rommie could not be located. She had left the Academy quite abruptly. No one had any idea where she had gone.

There was complete silence when she stepped onto the Command Deck. Then, a collective cheer broke out.

Notably, Captain Hunt was the only one who did not share in it.

Rommie looked towards him.

"Dylan," she began and stopped, not sure what else to say. Was he angry with her for albeit temporarily abandoning the mission? Abandoning him after having been his most avid supporter in the past? She had to say something. Anything. She finally thrust the unopened gift towards him. "I guess I won't need this after all."

Dylan accepted it, but replied, brusquely, "This is yours. I'll have it put in your quarters." He was strangely silent as the rest of the crew all talked at once.

Harper's voice piped above the rest. "When you get the chance, Rom-doll, there's a little problem with the rest of you that could use your attention."

Rommie perked curiously at this, and Dylan added, "You're the only one qualified for the task. But first, we need to talk."

The expressions of joy at Rommie's unexpected return halted as the crew took a cue from Dylan and left the two of them alone on the Command Deck.

Dylan nervously cleared his throat. "If you don't mind me asking: Why?"

Rommie raised her head. "This is one of the few things I've ever done for me. Not because someone convinced me of it or somebody ordered me too, but because I wanted to do it. I needed to do it. I need to do this, Dylan. I had to come back." Rommie paused. "You were right about one thing, Captain. The Commonwealth is a necessity. Otherwise, no one is safe. I pledged to hold the line against the night. I want to live up to that promise and make a difference. For organics and for AI's."

Dylan studied her for a moment and then said, "You will." He gave her a formal nod. "Return to duty."

"Yes, Captain," Rommie replied, taking a formal stance. "Permission to address the problem at hand."

"Permission granted."

Rommie tilted her head suddenly and closed her eyes, entering her matrix.

Once again she reached out and once again emptiness met her connection. "You can't fool me anymore," Rommie spoke to the emptiness. "I can see you now. I belong here. You don't."

"You're only half right. You left, leaving me free to take over." The dark malevolence of the wayward program coalesced before her.

The voice. The dark shape. The scornful smile that suddenly flashed her way were all too familiar. "Agent Carter?"

"Ah, so you haven't forgotten me."

"But how?" Rommie frowned, shaking her head. "I thought I--"

"Destroyed me?" He shrugged. His manifestation was wearing the security uniform she had last seen him in. "Yes, you did. Or, at least, temporarily."

"There was no way you could have--How did you get here?"

"You brought me here. I suppose you might call me a stowaway." He smirked at her.

Rommie stared at Carter in utter disbelief. "I would never have brought you here. My engineer checked me after that mission. I was clean."

Carter's laugh echoed through the matrix. "Never knowingly. Have you forgotten how closely connected I was with the Magog swarm ship? I suppose you might say that it was sheer paranoia that served as my preservation. Always have a backup."

The truth dawned on Rommie. "It was you. You were the one that cut me off."

"I wondered how long it would take you to figure it out." Carter began to pace. "You see, it's very difficult. I wasn't programmed, like you, to run an enormous ship. It took a bit of getting used to, tinkering with the vast systems at my disposal. Yet, especially if I was to remain undetected, your presence was too unpredictable. If I was ever to hope to get my footing in the system, you needed to be out of my way."

With a thought, Rommie started a diagnostic and began a search. Where were they? Where had he put them? Her counterparts hadn't been able to purge Carter which meant something must be blocking their efforts. _Andromeda_'s antiviral software appeared dormant. She immediately set about trying to activate it. "How did you?" Rommie asked, coolly. "How did you breach my internal systems? How did you get inside?"

As she suspected, Carter's ego remained fully intact. "Ah. Your engineer was studying the Magog ship. Once he hooked it up to _Andromeda_, I simply slipped through in disguise. I spent months fragmented. Your little engineer did detect a glitch, but he never knew exactly what happened."

"And you remained hidden." The same might be said of her mainframe AI and holographic program. Seconds had passed and still she hadn't found them.

"Oh, I admit. It wasn't easy. I started to predict _Andromeda_'s patterns, but yours are something entirely different. You have a surprising amount of unscheduled whims. What is this hobby of yours with tweaking the air filters?"

At last, Rommie detected something. She struggled to isolate it. Simultaneously, she glared angrily at Carter. "And now you think you can come in and take over."

"I don't think. I have! Who do you think nudged all those disagreements you kept having? Gave you reason to leave? And a reason to come back?" he bellowed. His manifestation grew larger. "You are a fool. Easy to manipulate. I am in control here. The only thing left for me is to have my very own avatar. In a way, we'll finally get the chance to work together and I get to have my revenge."

The mindscape rose and fell like the waves in the ocean. Black clouds rolled in, sparking with menacing bolts.

The atmosphere felt electric.

The corner of Rommie's mouth began to twitch. She sensed how powerful he had grown, and felt repelled. She sent out a mental cry and hoped it hit its mark.

His laughter became more manic.

In full fury, he rushed towards. He was fast, but she responded in kind. She felt him gaining on her. If she could hold on…just a few more nanoseconds.

She came up against the virtual wall, managing to stop before slamming into the dead end. Carter had followed on her heels. He glowered at her. "I will destroy you!"

Rommie felt the change before she saw it. "Strike that," Rommie replied. "Reverse it."

There was a ripple in the mindscape and the blackness was suddenly swallowed by a swirling red. Carter's eyes grew big. His arms disappeared. His entire body seemed to be evaporating. "What? What are you—No! Not that. How did you? How could you?"

The waves of the mindscape took on a deadly calm.

"You talk too much." Rommie blew out a puff of air. The manifestation of her enemy burst into a trillion harmless bits. Yes, harmless, but just to be sure…

"Overwriting," the awakened Andromeda declared succinctly.

Standing on the Command Deck, Rommie started to shiver.

"Is something wrong?" Dylan asked, watching her.

It was back. Her link with _Andromeda_. A warm feeling of welcome surrounded her. She reached out and checked the atmospheric filters, making several minor adjustments. "No," Rommie replied, opening her eyes and ceasing to quake with joy. "Everything seems to be in order. I purged the problem, Captain," she announced. "We shouldn't experience anymore malfunctions."

Dylan watched her. Rommie had returned and, like she had said, everything seemed to be in order, but he couldn't quite shake the odd impression that something had been lost.

He left Rommie alone. For this, she was grateful. She needed time to collect her thoughts. To settle her feelings. To deal with her emotions.

Alone.

She had often feared being alone, but she did not fear it now. She had made her decision without input from Dylan or her counterparts. The decision had belonged to her exclusively and suddenly, she understood that this new independence was something her mainframe and even her hologram would never understand. The consequences of her choices and the emotions that accompanied these belonged to her alone.

Love. Loss. Pain. Grief.

As she came to her quarters' corridor, she willed the doors to open, and entered the room, never breaking her stride. She looked at her bed, reflecting sadly that it would return to its former state of disuse. A glitter on the floor caught her eye, she bent and recognized a bit of the wrapping that had housed her never-before-seen gift. Her eyes wandered to the photographs near her bed. Wait! Here, something was amiss. Moving slowly over to the stand, she found it. Her present. The newly framed photo stood amidst her collection. Curiously, she picked up the gift and stared at it. It was a picture of the crew on Command Deck, and standing right beside them all, was Rommie herself. She gazed at it in wonder for a moment, then something in her broke.

She fell onto the bed.

Shutting her eyes, she stretched out full length and began to sob. She sobbed until the water ran down her nose and cheeks in small rivulets. She sobbed until her tear ducts ran dry, and she could cry no more.

It was almost human.

_Come away, O human child!_

_To the waters and the wild_

_With a fairy, hand in hand,_

_For the world's more full of weeping_

_than you can understand._

--Excerpt from poem by William Butler Yeats,

Quoted by Doctor Know in A.I.

**A/N: **This story was written to have an angsty ending, so the following is a more light-hearted ending. It is an additional scene that would take place after the last scene. If you prefer angst, then you might just skip this last scene.

"You wanted to see me, Captain?"

Dylan took his eyes away from a display of recently mapped areas of the New Commonwealth. "You've been doing an admirable job, Rommie. More than most ship's AI's have ever done. I know you've been carrying a majority of the workload, but that's about to change. The Commonwealth's started to take shape. I think it's time we trained and took on more crew."

Rommie's jaw nearly dropped. That suggestion meant that her captain had heard her complaints that _Andromeda_ was asked to perform tasks that even a ship with a complete crew complement would find taxing. No one ever wondered why Harper constantly needed to repair her. Rommie took in a deep breath and replied, "I'll start refreshing my training protocols, Captain."

More crew meant more time to be herself. Time that might even be spent off ship. Time to look in on friends, old and new.

Rommie continued down the corridor, wondering at this illogical, new soaring sensation. It felt like flying, but her feet never left the ground.


End file.
